Econophysics: Difference between revisions

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'''Econophysics''' and the closely-related field of '''sociophysics''' are areas of interdisciplinary research using methods and techniques from [[physics]] to model economic and other social phenomena respectively.  Although examples can be found dating back some way into the literature, both fields came to prominence in the 1990s in response to a number of factors, including perceived crises in traditional [[economics|economic]] methodology and analysis, the interest from the [[finance]] industry in employing trained physicists as [[quantitative analysis|quantitative analysts]], and the complex patterns observed in the newly-available high-frequency financial data, which suggested links to various recent developments in [[statistical mechanics]].
'''Econophysics''' and the closely-related field of '''sociophysics''' are areas of interdisciplinary research using methods and techniques from [[physics]] to model economic and other social phenomena respectively.  Although examples can be found dating back some way into the literature, both fields came to prominence in the 1990s in response to a number of factors, including perceived crises in traditional [[economics|economic]] methodology and analysis, the interest from the [[finance]] industry in employing trained physicists as [[quantitative analysis|quantitative analysts]], and the complex patterns observed in the newly-available high-frequency financial data, which suggested links to various contemporary developments in [[statistical mechanics]].
 
As well as bringing new mathematical and computational techniques to the table, econophysics represents a considerable conceptual shift in its approach to economic problems.


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       | location = Cambridge
       | location = Cambridge
       | isbn = 0521824478
       | isbn = 0521824478
  }}
* {{cite book
      | author = [[Philip Mirowski|Mirowski, P.]]
      | date = 1989
      | title = More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics
      | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]]
      | location = Cambridge
      | isbn = 0521426898
   }}
   }}



Revision as of 08:19, 2 January 2007

Econophysics and the closely-related field of sociophysics are areas of interdisciplinary research using methods and techniques from physics to model economic and other social phenomena respectively. Although examples can be found dating back some way into the literature, both fields came to prominence in the 1990s in response to a number of factors, including perceived crises in traditional economic methodology and analysis, the interest from the finance industry in employing trained physicists as quantitative analysts, and the complex patterns observed in the newly-available high-frequency financial data, which suggested links to various contemporary developments in statistical mechanics.

As well as bringing new mathematical and computational techniques to the table, econophysics represents a considerable conceptual shift in its approach to economic problems.

[1] [2]

External links

References

Notes

  1. Stanley, H. E. et al. (1996). "Anomalous fluctuations in the dynamics of complex systems: from DNA and physiology to econophysics". Physica A 224: 302–321. DOI:10.1016/0378-4371(95)00409-2. Research Blogging.
  2. Galam, S., Gefen, Y. and Shapir, Y. (1982). "Sociophysics: a new approach of sociological collective behaviour. I. Mean-behaviour description of a strike". Journal of Mathematical Sociology 9: 1–13.

Bibliography