Over the last two decades there has been a great deal of research into nonlinear dynamic models in economics, finance and the social sciences. This book contains twenty papers that range over very recent applications in these areas. Topics covered include structural change and economic growth, disequilibrium dynamics and economic policy as well as models with boundedly rational agents. The book illustrates some of the most recent research tools in this area and will be of interest to economists working in economic dynamics and to mathematicians interested in seeing ideas from nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory applied to the economic sciences.

This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the "Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Social Sciences" Meeting held at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, on May 27-30, 1991. The Meeting was organized by the National Group "Modelli Nonlineari in Economia e Dinamiche Complesse" of the Italian Ministery of University and SCientific Research, M.U.RS.T. The aim of the Conference, which followed a previous analogous initiative taking place in the very same Certosa, on January 1988*, was the one of offering a come together opportunity to economists interested in a new mathematical approach to the modelling of economical processes, through the use of more advanced analytical techniques, and mathematicians acting in the field of global dynamical systems theory and applications. A basiC underlying idea drove the organizers: the necessity of fOCUSing on the use that recent methods and results, as those commonly referred to the overpopularized label of "Chaotic Dynamics", did find in the social sciences domain; and thus to check their actual relevance in the research program of modelling economic phenomena, in order to individuate and stress promising perspectives, as well as to curb excessive hopes and criticize not infrequent cases where research reduces to mechanical, ad hoc, applications of "a la mode" techniques. In a word we felt the need of looking about the state of the arts in non-linear systems theory applications to economics and social processes: hence the title of the workshop and the volume.

This book pursues a nonlinear approach in considering both chaotic dynamical models and agent-based simulation models of economics, as well as their dynamical behaviors. Three key concepts arising in this context are “nonlinearity,” “bounded rationality” and “heterogeneity,” which also make up the title of the book. Nonlinearity is the warp that runs throughout all models because systems that exhibit chaotic or other complex behavior in the absence of any exogenous disturbances are absolutely nonlinear. Bounded rationality constitutes the woof, because economic systems do not exhibit complex behavior if all agents are perfectly rational, as is usually assumed in neoclassical economics. Agents who are boundedly rational have to struggle to do their best with limited information and tend to adapt to their economic environment without knowing what is the best. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of firms or consumers dyes the fabric of complex dynamics woven from the warp and woof.

This volume is centered around the issue of market design and resulting market dynamics. The economic crisis of 2007-2009 has once again highlighted the importance of a proper design of market protocols and institutional details for economic dynamics and macroeconomics. Papers in this volume capture institutional details of particular markets, behavioral details of agents' decision making as well as spillovers between markets and effects to the macroeconomy. Computational methods are used to replicate and understand market dynamics emerging from interaction of heterogeneous agents, and to develop models that have predictive power for complex market dynamics. Finally treatments of overlapping generations models and differential games with heterogeneous actors are provided.

The book presents the lectures delivered during a short course held at Urbino University in summer 2015 on qualitative theory of dynamical systems, included in the activities of the COST Action IS1104 “The EU in the new economic complex geography: models, tools and policy evaluation”. It provides a basic introduction to dynamical systems and optimal control both in continuous and discrete time, as well as some numerical methods and applications in economic modelling. Economic and social systems are intrinsically dynamic, characterized by interdependence, nonlinearity and complexity, and these features can only be approached using a qualitative analysis based on the study of invariant sets (equilibrium points, limit cycles and more complex attractors, together with the boundaries of their basins of attraction), which requires a trade-off between analytical, geometrical and numerical methods. Even though the early steps of the qualitative theory of dynamical systems have been in continuous time models, in economic and social modelling discrete time is often used to describe event-driven (often decision-driven) evolving systems. The book is written for Ph.D. and master’s students, post-doctoral fellows, and researchers in economics or sociology, and it only assumes a basic knowledge of calculus. However it also suggests some more advanced topics.

The essays in this special volume survey some of the most recent advances in the global analysis of dynamic models for economics, finance and the social sciences. They deal in particular with a range of topics from mathematical methods as well as numerous applications including recent developments on asset pricing, heterogeneous beliefs, global bifurcations in complementarity games, international subsidy games and issues in economic geography. A number of stochastic dynamic models are also analysed. The book is a collection of essays in honour of the 60th birthday of Laura Gardini.​

This volume discusses the impact of Financial Economics, Growth Dynamics, and the Finance & Banking sector in the economies of countries. The contributors analyse and discuss the effects of the recent financial crises on the economic growth and performance in various countries. The volume covers aspects like foreign borrowing, impact on productivity and debt crises that are strongly affected by the financial volatility of recent years and includes examples from Europe and Asia. In addition, the authors give particular attention to the private sector of Finance and Banking, which is deeply interwoven with the financial performance of a country’s economy. Examples such as bank profitability and troubled loans are covered and the volume also discusses the economic impact of banks such as the Ottoman Bank in a national economy. The book also explores the importance of financial stability, intellectual capital and bank performance for a stable economic environment.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This collected volume represents the final outcome of the COST Action IS1104 “The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation”. Visualizing the EU as a complex and multi-layered network, the book is organized in three parts, each of them dealing with a different level of analysis: At the macro-level, Part I considers the interactions within large economic systems (regions or countries) involving trade, workers migration, and other factor movements. At the meso-level, Part II discusses interactions within specific but wide-ranging markets, with a focus on financial markets and banking systems. Lastly, at the micro-level, Part III explores the decision-making of single firms, especially in the context of location decisions.

Particularly in the humanities and social sciences, festschrifts are a popular forum for discussion. The IJBF provides quick and easy general access to these important resources for scholars and students. The festschrifts are located in state and regional libraries and their bibliographic details are recorded. Since 1983, more than 639,000 articles from more than 29,500 festschrifts, published between 1977 and 2010, have been catalogued.

This book offers a strong contribution to the growing field of institutional economics, going beyond the question of why institutions matter and examines the ways in which different types of institutions are conducive to the enhancement of competitiveness and economic development. Adopting a variety of approaches, ranging from New Institutional Economics, Public Choice, Constitutional Political Economy and Austrian Economics, to more traditional economic approaches, contributors examine the important issues of interest to development economics. This book asks whether democracy is a pre-condition for economic development, what the proper role of government is in the age of globalization and whether successful government led policies were the cause of South Korea’s economic development. As well as these key questions, the book covers the issues of whether the government should rely on the market process to encourage economic development or must they interfere, and by what criteria one can judge a proposal for policies for economic prosperity. The book tries to make a contribution by introducing a variety of perspective, some argue in favour of industrial policies while others argue for a lesser role for the government and a greater entrepreneurial freedom. Some question the wisdom of promoting democracy as a necessary condition for economic development while others argue that political liberalization is the basis of lasting competitive edge of an economy. The book should be of great interest to students and researchers in need of a multi-perspective collection covering several approaches to the issues of institutional economics and national competition.