economic system dynamics经济系统动力学.pdfVIP

ECONOMIC SYSTEM DYNAMICS ¨ JOSEPH L. McCAULEY AND CORNELIA M. KUFFNER Received 4 December 2003 We provide here a qualitative summary of the main ideas from econophysics and finance theory, starting with a thorough criticism of the standard ideas taught in typical eco- nomics textbooks. The emphasis is on the Galilean or physicists’ approach to market dynamics, as opposed to the standard nonempirical postulatory one. 1. Static versus dynamic models of pricing Standard textbook economic theory quite generally assumes the neoclassical economic model, which is a static model of unregulated free markets. Every western government in our era believes implicitly in a free market with “springs,” where imbalances are only of short-term nature. The model postulates the nonempirical idea of utility and assumes stable equilibrium, a notion that goes back over two hundred years to Adam Smith’s fa- mous “Invisible Hand.” The standard, reigning theory of free markets asserts that individually selfish behavior can lead collectively to the greatest benefit of society. Modern dynamic approaches, in stark contrast, understand markets as far from equilibrium systems [6, 12]. How did such fundamentally opposing viewpoints in teaching arise? We first define the basic elements of market dynamics independently of any particular model and then, after surveying the neoclassical model [27, 28] critically, we discuss in the other three sections of this paper the empirical basis and implications of market disequilibrium. To model a market, consider N agents who buy and sell n assets. By agents we mean consumers, producers, traders, and so forth. At any given time t each agent holds quan- tities x (t) = (x , ... ,x ) of the n different assets. The price of the assets is denoted by 1 n p (t) = (p 1, ... ,p n ). The basis for modelling the dynamics of a market of n assets and N trader