Competitive agents in a market: Statistical physics of the minority game

A brief review is presented of the minority game, a simple frustrated many-body system stimulated by considerations of a market of competitive speculative agents. Its cooperative behaviour exhibits phase transitions and both ergodic and non-ergodic regimes. It provides novel challenges to statistical physics, reminiscent of those of mean-field spin glasses. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.