Complexity Economics

If standard economic theory can’t explain a traffic jam, how can it cope with crises?

Notes from the Institute’s Director of Research on some significant papers and contributions produced in 2016 under the INET rubric 

Prof. Sanjeev Goyal explains his general theory of network formation based on individual incentives, and their economic implications

As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff remind us in the title of their book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, financial crises are nothing new (Reinhart and Rogoff (2009)). However, they often come as a surprise to many people because in most countries they appear only periodically.

I am supposed to speak about Complexity Economics and the issues this theoretical approach is able to illuminate. Defined as such, it appears as if I should discuss methodology and I am reminded of Paul Krugman’s quote: “It is said that those who can, do, while those who cannot, discuss methodology”. So, having a discussion centered on methodology may give the impression that the panelists in this session are unable to make scientific progress.

Complexity economics represents a different vision of the economic process and has the capacity to illuminate different systems of behavior.

The path to better understanding the economy requires treating the economy as the complex system that it really is. We need more realistic behavioral models, but even more important, we need to capture the most important components of the economy and their most important interactions, and make realistic models of institutions.

In 1803 Louis Poinsot, a French physicist, wrote a book of great success, Elements de Statique, which was destined to have practical and social influences unimaginable to the same author.