From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities

From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities presents and unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity.

Klappentext

emFrom Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic/em emDiscontinuities/em presents and unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity.

Inhalt

1. Discontinuity in Economic Theory and Economic Discontinuities.- 2. The Mathematics of Discontinuity.- 3. Discontinuities in Microeconomics Systems.- 4. Speculative Bubbles and Crashes I: Irrational.- 5. Speculative Bubbles and Crashes II: Rational and Semi-Rational.- 6. Catastrophe Theory and Hysteresis in Macroeconomics.- 7. Chaos Theory and Complex Macroeconomic Dynamics.- 8. Discontinuity and Capital Theory.- References.