This handbook covers the historical developments and early concerns of complexity theorists and brings it into engagement with the world today. A vibrant alternative to orthodox economics, it is a crucial resource for scholars, researchers and economists in the disciplines of heterodox economics, economic theory, and econophysics.

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.

Table of Contents

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List of contributors

Ping Chen, Wolfram Elsner, Andreas Pyka: The Complexity of Complexity Economics - Historical Emergence, Interdisciplinarity, Contesting Perspectives, and Future Development. Introduction to the Handbook of Complexity Economics

Part I: Basics and Methods in Complexity Economics

I.1: Basics

Chapter 1: Mauro Gallegati, Alan Kirman: Stairway to Complexity

Chapter 2: K. Vela Velupillai: Aspects of Discrete and Continuous Complexity Theories

Chapter 3: César A. Hidalgo: Knowledge is Non-Fungible

Chapter 4: John B. Davis: What are Reflexive Economic Agents? Position-Adjustment, SLAM, and Self-Organization

Chapter 5: Pier Paolo Saviotti: Complexity, Coevolution, and the Economy

Chapter 6: Ping Chen: Complexity Economics: History, Issues, and Methods

I.2: Methods Chapter 7: W. Brian W. Arthur: Some Thoughts on Agent-Based Modeling and the Role of Computation in Economics Chapter 8: James K. Galbraith: Economic Complexity in the Real World

Chapter 9: Linyuan Lü, Shuqi Xu, Xu Na: Complexity Science in the Application of Big Data Economics

Chapter 10: Kristina Bogner, Matthias Müller, Johannes Dahlke, Bernd Ebersberger, Thomas Berger: Agent-Based Modelling and Machine Learning - A New Paradigm for Complexity Economics and Sustainability Transitions?

Chapter 11: Roy Cerqueti, Matteo Cinelli, Giovanna Ferraro, Antonio Iovanella: The Resilience of a Complex Network: Methods and Applications

Chapter 12: Karl Naumann-Woleske, Max Sina Knicker, Michael Benzaquen, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud: Exploration of the Parameter Space in Macroeconomic Models

Chapter 13: Gaël Giraud, Paul Valcke: Stock-Flow-Consistent Macroeconomic Dynamics in Continuous Time

Part II: Domains and Major Challenges

II.1: Domains

Chapter 14.1: Victor M. Yakovenko: Monetary Economics from econophysics perspective (reprint)

Chapter 14.2: Victor M. Yakovenko: Statistical Physics Perspective on Economic Inequality

Chapter 15: Harry Bloch, Stan Metcalfe: Price Theory in a Complex and Evolving Economy

Chapter 16: Roger A. McCain: Complexity and Productivity: The Task Approach

Chapter 17: Ping Chen: 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

Chapter 18: Petra Ahrweiler: The Evolution of Innovation

Chapter 19: Thomas Berger: Agriculture as a Social-Ecological System

Chapter 20: Leilei Shi, Bing-Hong Wang: Network Complexity and Financial Behavior - Volume Distribution over Price in Financial Market

Chapter 21: Yinan N. Tang: Trading Psychology and Market Resilience: From Brownian Motion to Birth-Death Process in Financial Dynamics

Chapter 22: Hardy Hanappi: Complex World Money

Chapter 23: Éva Kuruczleki, Anita Pelle, Marcell Zoltán Végh: The European Union as a Complex System in Times of Crisis

II.2: New Challenges

Chapter 24: Dirk Helbing, Carina I. Hausladen: Socio-Economic Implications of the Digital Revolution

Chapter 25: Marcello Nieddu, Marco Raberto, Silvano Cincotti: Agent-Based Macroeconomics of Climate and Digital Transformations

Chapter 26: Matteo Coronese, Davide Luzzati: Economic Impacts of Natural Hazards and Complexity Science: A Critical Review

Chapter 27: Michael W. M. Roos: Climate Change From the Perspective of Complexity Economics

Chapter 28: Torsten Heinrich: Epidemics in Modern Economies

Chapter 29: Jing Chen, James K. Galbraith: A Biophysical Approach to Production Theory

Chapter 30: Sheri M. Markose: Digital Foundations of Evolvable Genomic Intelligence and Human Proteanism: Complexity with Novelty Production beyond Bounded Rationality

Chapter 31: Dominik Hartmann, Flávio L. Pinheiro: Economic Complexity and Inequality at the National and Regional Level

PART III: Political Economy and Complexity Policy

III.1: Complexity Political Economy

Chapter 32: Hilton Root: An Agenda for Complex Systems Research in Political Economy

Chapter 33: Manuel Scholz-Wäckerle: Planetary-Scale Computation, Political Economic Complexity and Hegemony

Chapter 34: Frank Beckenbach: Potential for Mutual Enrichment? - Confronting Marxian Economics and Complexity Economics

III.2: Complexity Policy

Chapter 35: Fernanda Senra de Moura, Pete Barbrook-Johnson: Using Data-Driven Systems Mapping to Contextualise Complexity Economics Insights

Chapter 36: Carlo Bottai, Martina Iori: The Knowledge Complexity of the European Metropolitan Areas: Selecting and Clustering Their Hidden Features

Chapter 37: Giovanni Dosi, Marcelo C. Pereira, Andrea Roventini, Maria Enrica Virgillito: A Complexity View on the Future of Work. Meta-Modelling Exploration of the Multi-Sector K+ S Agent-Based Model