  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 multi-agent population competing for a limited
resource, and find that the level of predictability actually increases prior to
a large change. These large changes hence arise as a predictable consequence of
information encoded in the system's global state.
