Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World

As a new point of view we turn to bounded rationality, a departure from the mainstream tradition. We no longer can assume that every agent is a perfect calculator. This point of view is given a great deal of emphasis by Herbert Simon. Simon argued that people do not maximize. When they’re forecasting the future, they do not perform the task of rati

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Realistically, agents not identical, don’t know other agents’ circumstances or likely behavior; or situation complicated and not fully known. There is fundamental uncertainty: Therefore “the problem” is not well-defined; Therefore “rationality” is not well-defined; Therefore “optimal” behavior is not well-defined; Behavior and outcome unlikely to b

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“In equilibrium systems, everything adds up nicely and linearly. It is trivial to generalize to many agents; this simply corresponds to connecting more glasses of water. The effect on the water level from adding several drops of water is proportional to the number of drops. One does not have to think about the individual drops. In physics, we refer

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Instead of assuming agents were perfectly rational, we allowed there were limits to how smart they were. Instead of assuming the economy displayed diminishing returns (negative feedbacks), we allowed that it might also contain increasing returns (positive feedbacks). Instead of assuming the economy was a mechanistic system operating at equilibrium,

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