Non-Equilibrium Social Science and Policy Introduction and Essays on New and Changing Paradigms in Socio-Economic Thinking

• Other Authors: Johnson, Jeffrey (Editor), Nowak, Andrzej (Editor), Ormerod, Paul (Editor), Rosewell, Bridget (Editor), Zhang, Yi-Cheng (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2017
• Series: Understanding Complex Systems
• Subjects: Social research & statistics; Economic theory & philosophy; Operational research; Cybernetics & systems theory; Society & social sciences; Data-driven Science, Modeling and Theory Building; Methodology of the Social Sciences; Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Complexity; Computational Social Sciences; Complex Systems; Biotechnology; Quantitative Economics; Operations Research and Decision Theory; Applied Dynamical Systems; Behavioral economics; Complex socio-economic systems; Econophysics and Social Dynamics; Information economy and policy informatics; Paradigm shift in economic thinking; Social dynamics in policy; Quantitative social sciences; Ecological science, the Biosphere; Management decision making; Computer applications in the social & behavioural sciences
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

The overall aim of this book, an outcome of the European FP7 FET Open NESS project, is to contribute to the ongoing effort to put the quantitative social sciences on a proper footing for the 21st century. A key focus is economics, and its implications on policy making, where the still dominant traditional approach increasingly struggles to capture the economic realities we observe in the world today - with vested interests getting too often in the way of real advances. Insights into behavioral economics and modern computing techniques have made possible both the integration of larger information sets and the exploration of disequilibrium behavior. The domain-based chapters of this work illustrate how economic theory is the only branch of social sciences which still holds to its old paradigm of an equilibrium science - an assumption that has already been relaxed in all related fields of research in the light of recent advances in complex and dynamical systems theory and related data mining. The other chapters give various takes on policy and decision making in this context. Written in nontechnical style throughout, with a mix of tutorial and essay-like contributions, this book will benefit all researchers, scientists, professionals and practitioners interested in learning about the 'thinking in complexity' to understand how socio-economic systems really work.