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I think 'complexity economics' is well out of the mainstream. I sincerely doubt this type of modeling is taught in economics departments (outside Iowa State).
by aet 13y ago
I think 'complexity economics' is well out of the mainstream. I sincerely doubt this type of modeling is taught in economics departments (outside Iowa State). That being said, there are departments that teach "experimental economics" - which sounds like the same thing. You are now just doing "computational" experiments.
- dllthomas 13y agoI think this kind of stuff has tremendous space to add value, but we should always keep in mind that experimentation by simulation gives us insight into the extrapolation of theories, and only into reality so far as those theories are correct. Of course, done well it can help to validate or disprove theories when we have sufficient ability to measure starting points...
- mindcrime 13y agoIt's interesting you would say that... one of the big arguments of the "complexity economics" folks, as I understand it, is that since economies are not actually equilibrium systems, all of the math imported into economics from physics (and elsewhere) that assumes equilibrium, fails to represent reality. TBH, I'm not an economist (just a computer science guy who's really interested in economics) but from what I have read, Beinhocker makes a pretty strong case that mainstream economics started going off the rails way back when Walras "borrowed" equilibrium based math from physics and brought it into economics in an attempt to establish economics as a science with the same grounding as the natural sciences.