Predictability of large future changes in a competitive evolving population.

The dynamical evolution of many economic, sociological, biological, and physical systems tends to be dominated by a relatively small number of unexpected, large changes ("extreme events"). We study the large, internal changes produced in a generic multiagent population competing for a limited resource, and find that the level of predictability increases prior to a large change. These large changes hence arise as a predictable consequence of information encoded in the system's global state.