Coping with the Complexity of Financial Markets

The thesis contains two parts: part I presents a detailed artificial financial market with a large number of heterogeneous interacting agents. The model is used to assess the effects of a financial transaction tax. Part II is concerned with the properties and the topological structure of the Italian interbank network. The two parts contribute to very different areas of the literature. However, there is an overarching theme, namely applying tools from the analysis of complex systems to financial markets.