Routledge International Handbook of Complexity Economics
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 22. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
740 pages
978-0-367-63424-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Routledge International Handbook of Complexity Economics covers the historical developments and early concerns of complexity theorists and brings them into engagement with the world today.
In this volume, a distinguished group of international scholars explore the state of the art of complexity economics, and how it may deliver new and relevant insights to the challenges of the 21st century. Complexity science started in 1899 when Henri Poincare described the three-body problem. The first approaches in economics emerged somewhat later, in the 1980s, driven by the Brussels-Austin school. Since then, complexity economics has gone through numerous developments: departing from linear simplifications, applying physical algorithms, to evolutionary economics and big data. This book covers the basic principles and methods, and offers an overview of the various domains-ranging from diverse fields of productivity studies, agricultural economics, to monetary economics-as well as the current challenges such as climate change, epidemics and economic inequality where complexity economics can provide insight. It closes with a review of complexity political economy and policy.
Offering a vibrant alternative to orthodox economics, this handbook is a crucial resource for advanced students, researchers and economists across the disciplines of heterodox economics, economic theory and econophysics.
In this volume, a distinguished group of international scholars explore the state of the art of complexity economics, and how it may deliver new and relevant insights to the challenges of the 21st century. Complexity science started in 1899 when Henri Poincare described the three-body problem. The first approaches in economics emerged somewhat later, in the 1980s, driven by the Brussels-Austin school. Since then, complexity economics has gone through numerous developments: departing from linear simplifications, applying physical algorithms, to evolutionary economics and big data. This book covers the basic principles and methods, and offers an overview of the various domains-ranging from diverse fields of productivity studies, agricultural economics, to monetary economics-as well as the current challenges such as climate change, epidemics and economic inequality where complexity economics can provide insight. It closes with a review of complexity political economy and policy.
Offering a vibrant alternative to orthodox economics, this handbook is a crucial resource for advanced students, researchers and economists across the disciplines of heterodox economics, economic theory and econophysics.
Reviews / Votes
The complexity economics, based on physical algorithms and statistics to analyze economic mass data and time-series, provides an alternative paradigm to the overly-simplified mainstream rationality assumption-based Neoclassical approach for understanding macro growth, structural transformation, climate change, financial crises, trade wars and other real-world phenomena. This Handbook collects recent progresses and new insights by authors in this new discipline. I recommend the book to scholars who are interested in this new approach.Justin Yifu Lin
Professor and Dean, Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University, China
Former Chief Economist, the World Bank
The economic system is a supremely complex one. The traditional approach to understanding it has been to reduce complexities to simple rules and behaviors, abstracting many features of the real economy. However, thanks to the enormous increases in both the amount of data available and computing power, there is nowadays an alternative approach: the one proposed by complexity economics, a fast-growing field in economic analysis.
The Handbook of Complexity Economics provides a thorough and updated vision of this very promising field and will surely encourage many scholars to deepen research in this area.
Victor A. Beker
Professor of Economics, University of Belgrano and University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Former Associate Editor of Journal of Behavior and Organization
Timely and compact one-volume from a set of economists uniquely positioned to contribute about complexity. The result is an up-to-date, integrated, compelling, canonical guide-book on the contours and contents of an approach that is extremely remunerative for theory as well as actual practice in the 21st century economy. Older and younger generations now have a fresh meeting point from where to breathe new life into the most pressing intellectual and societal challenges of our age.
Sandro Mendonca
Iscte Business School, Portugal
Former communications regulator
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
134 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 19 s/w Zeichnungen, 32 s/w Tabellen, 153 s/w Abbildungen
32 Tables, black and white; 19 Line drawings, black and white; 134 Halftones, black and white; 153 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 39 mm
Weight
1197 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-367-63424-7 (9780367634247)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Ping Chen | Wolfram Elsner | Andreas Pyka
Routledge International Handbook of Complexity Economics
Book
11/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€387.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Ping Chen | Wolfram Elsner | Andreas Pyka
Routledge International Handbook of Complexity Economics
E-Book
11/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€68.49
Available for download
Ping Chen | Wolfram Elsner | Andreas Pyka
Routledge International Handbook of Complexity Economics
E-Book
11/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€68.49
Available for download
Persons
Ping Chen is Professor of Finance at the National School of Development, Peking University, Beijing, and a Research Fellow at the China Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Ping holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Their research includes economic color chaos, birth-death process for financial markets, theory of metabolic growth and unified theory of complexity economics.
Wolfram Elsner is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Bremen, Germany, since 1995. He managed the Editor Forum for Social Economics from 2012 to 2018. Wolfram was President of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) in 2012-2016 and Editor-in-Chief of the Review of Evolutionary Political Economy (REPE) since 2018.
Andreas Pyka holds the chair for innovation economics at the University of Hohenheim. Currently, his research areas are knowledge-driven developments and transformation of economic systems with a particular emphasis on the knowledge-based bioeconomy and the transformation of economic systems towards sustainability.
Wolfram Elsner is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Bremen, Germany, since 1995. He managed the Editor Forum for Social Economics from 2012 to 2018. Wolfram was President of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) in 2012-2016 and Editor-in-Chief of the Review of Evolutionary Political Economy (REPE) since 2018.
Andreas Pyka holds the chair for innovation economics at the University of Hohenheim. Currently, his research areas are knowledge-driven developments and transformation of economic systems with a particular emphasis on the knowledge-based bioeconomy and the transformation of economic systems towards sustainability.
Content
The Complexity of Complexity Economics, Its History and Interdisciplinarity and Its Diverse Perspectives and Future: Introduction
Ping Chen, Wolfram Elsner and Andreas Pyka
PART I Basics and Methods in Complexity Economics
I.1 Basics
1 Stairway to Complexity
Mauro Gallegati and Alan Kirman
2 Aspects of Discrete and Continuous Complexity Theories
K. Vela Velupillai
3 Knowledge Is Non-fungible
Cesar A. Hidalgo
4 What Are Reflexive Economic Agents? Position-adjustment, SLAM, and Self-Organization
John B. Davis
5 Complexity, Coevolution, and the Economy
Pier Paolo Saviotti
6 Complexity Economics: History, Issues, and Methods
Ping Chen
I.2 Methods
7 Some Thoughts on Agent-Based Modeling and the Role of Computation in Economics
W. Brian Arthur
8 Economic Complexity in the Real World
James K. Galbraith
9 Complexity Science in the Application of Big Data Economics
Linyuan Lue, Shuqi Xu and Xu Na
10 Agent-Based Modelling and Machine Learning: A New Paradigm for Complexity Economics and Sustainability Transitions?
Kristina Bogner, Matthias Mueller, Johannes Dahlke, Bernd Ebersberger and Thomas Berger
11 The Resilience of a Complex Network: Methods and Applications
Roy Cerqueti, Matteo Cinelli, Giovanna Ferraro and Antonio Iovanella
12 Exploration of the Parameter Space in Macroeconomic Models
Karl Naumann-Woleske, Max Sina Knicker, Michael Benzaquen and Jean-Philippe Bouchaud
13 Stock-Flow-Consistent Macroeconomic Dynamics in Continuous Time
Gael Giraud and Paul Valcke
PART II Domains and Major Challenges
II.1 Domains
14.1 Monetary Economics from Econophysics Perspective
Victor M. Yakovenko
14.2 Statistical Physics Perspective on Economic Inequality
Victor M. Yakovenko
15 Price Theory in a Complex and Evolving Economy
Harry Bloch and Stan Metcalfe
16 Complexity and Productivity: The Task Approach
Roger A. McCain
17 From Economic Chaos to Viable Markets: The Biophysics Foundation of Smith's Theory on the Division of Labor and Schumpeter's Wave Theory of Business Cycles
Ping Chen
18 The Evolution of Innovation
Petra Ahrweiler
19 Agriculture as a Social-Ecological System
Thomas Berger
20 Network Complexity and Financial Behavior: Volume Distribution over Price in Financial Market
Bing-Hong Wang and Leilei Shi
21 Trading Psychology and Market Resilience: From Brownian Motion to Birth-Death Process in Financial Dynamics
Y.N. Tang
22 Complex World Money: A Different Sign System of Global Social Value Waits at the Doors
Hardy Hanappi
23 The European Union as a Complex System in Times of Crisis
Eva Kuruczleki, Anita Pelle and Marcell Zoltan Vegh
II.2 New Challenges
24 Socio-Economic Implications of the Digital Revolution
Dirk Helbing and Carina I. Hausladen
25 Agent-Based Macroeconomics of Climate and Digital Transformations
Marcello Nieddu, Marco Raberto and Silvano Cincotti
26 Economic Impacts of Natural Hazards and Complexity Science: A Critical Review
Matteo Coronese and Davide Luzzati
27 Climate Change from the Perspective of Complexity Economics
Michael W.M. Roos
28 Epidemics in Modern Economies
Torsten Heinrich
29 A Biophysical Approach to Production Theory
Jing Chen and James K. Galbraith
30 Digital Foundations of Evolvable Genomic Intelligence and Human Proteanism: Complexity with Novelty Production beyond Bounded Rationality
Sheri M. Markose
31 Economic Complexity and Inequality at the National and Regional Levels
Dominik Hartmann and Flavio L. Pinheiro
PART III Political Economy and Complexity Policy
III.1 Complexity Political Economy
32 An Agenda for Complex Systems Research in Political Economy
Hilton L. Root
33 Planetary-Scale Computation, Political Economic Complexity and Hegemony
Manuel Scholz-Wackerle
34 Potential for Mutual Enrichment? Confronting Marxian Economics and Complexity Economics
Frank Beckenbach
III.2 Complexity Policy
35 Using Data-Driven Systems Mapping to Contextualise Complexity Economics Insights
Fernanda Senra de Moura and Pete Barbrook-Johnson
36 The Knowledge Complexity of the European Metropolitan Areas: Selecting and Clustering Their Hidden Features
Carlo Bottai and Martina Iori
37 A Complexity View on the Future of Work: Meta-modelling Exploration of the Multi-sector K+S Agent-Based Model
Giovanni Dosi, Marcelo C. Pereira, Andrea Roventini and Maria Enrica Virgillito
Ping Chen, Wolfram Elsner and Andreas Pyka
PART I Basics and Methods in Complexity Economics
I.1 Basics
1 Stairway to Complexity
Mauro Gallegati and Alan Kirman
2 Aspects of Discrete and Continuous Complexity Theories
K. Vela Velupillai
3 Knowledge Is Non-fungible
Cesar A. Hidalgo
4 What Are Reflexive Economic Agents? Position-adjustment, SLAM, and Self-Organization
John B. Davis
5 Complexity, Coevolution, and the Economy
Pier Paolo Saviotti
6 Complexity Economics: History, Issues, and Methods
Ping Chen
I.2 Methods
7 Some Thoughts on Agent-Based Modeling and the Role of Computation in Economics
W. Brian Arthur
8 Economic Complexity in the Real World
James K. Galbraith
9 Complexity Science in the Application of Big Data Economics
Linyuan Lue, Shuqi Xu and Xu Na
10 Agent-Based Modelling and Machine Learning: A New Paradigm for Complexity Economics and Sustainability Transitions?
Kristina Bogner, Matthias Mueller, Johannes Dahlke, Bernd Ebersberger and Thomas Berger
11 The Resilience of a Complex Network: Methods and Applications
Roy Cerqueti, Matteo Cinelli, Giovanna Ferraro and Antonio Iovanella
12 Exploration of the Parameter Space in Macroeconomic Models
Karl Naumann-Woleske, Max Sina Knicker, Michael Benzaquen and Jean-Philippe Bouchaud
13 Stock-Flow-Consistent Macroeconomic Dynamics in Continuous Time
Gael Giraud and Paul Valcke
PART II Domains and Major Challenges
II.1 Domains
14.1 Monetary Economics from Econophysics Perspective
Victor M. Yakovenko
14.2 Statistical Physics Perspective on Economic Inequality
Victor M. Yakovenko
15 Price Theory in a Complex and Evolving Economy
Harry Bloch and Stan Metcalfe
16 Complexity and Productivity: The Task Approach
Roger A. McCain
17 From Economic Chaos to Viable Markets: The Biophysics Foundation of Smith's Theory on the Division of Labor and Schumpeter's Wave Theory of Business Cycles
Ping Chen
18 The Evolution of Innovation
Petra Ahrweiler
19 Agriculture as a Social-Ecological System
Thomas Berger
20 Network Complexity and Financial Behavior: Volume Distribution over Price in Financial Market
Bing-Hong Wang and Leilei Shi
21 Trading Psychology and Market Resilience: From Brownian Motion to Birth-Death Process in Financial Dynamics
Y.N. Tang
22 Complex World Money: A Different Sign System of Global Social Value Waits at the Doors
Hardy Hanappi
23 The European Union as a Complex System in Times of Crisis
Eva Kuruczleki, Anita Pelle and Marcell Zoltan Vegh
II.2 New Challenges
24 Socio-Economic Implications of the Digital Revolution
Dirk Helbing and Carina I. Hausladen
25 Agent-Based Macroeconomics of Climate and Digital Transformations
Marcello Nieddu, Marco Raberto and Silvano Cincotti
26 Economic Impacts of Natural Hazards and Complexity Science: A Critical Review
Matteo Coronese and Davide Luzzati
27 Climate Change from the Perspective of Complexity Economics
Michael W.M. Roos
28 Epidemics in Modern Economies
Torsten Heinrich
29 A Biophysical Approach to Production Theory
Jing Chen and James K. Galbraith
30 Digital Foundations of Evolvable Genomic Intelligence and Human Proteanism: Complexity with Novelty Production beyond Bounded Rationality
Sheri M. Markose
31 Economic Complexity and Inequality at the National and Regional Levels
Dominik Hartmann and Flavio L. Pinheiro
PART III Political Economy and Complexity Policy
III.1 Complexity Political Economy
32 An Agenda for Complex Systems Research in Political Economy
Hilton L. Root
33 Planetary-Scale Computation, Political Economic Complexity and Hegemony
Manuel Scholz-Wackerle
34 Potential for Mutual Enrichment? Confronting Marxian Economics and Complexity Economics
Frank Beckenbach
III.2 Complexity Policy
35 Using Data-Driven Systems Mapping to Contextualise Complexity Economics Insights
Fernanda Senra de Moura and Pete Barbrook-Johnson
36 The Knowledge Complexity of the European Metropolitan Areas: Selecting and Clustering Their Hidden Features
Carlo Bottai and Martina Iori
37 A Complexity View on the Future of Work: Meta-modelling Exploration of the Multi-sector K+S Agent-Based Model
Giovanni Dosi, Marcelo C. Pereira, Andrea Roventini and Maria Enrica Virgillito