Complexity and the Economy - Grand Format

Economics is currently undergoing its most profound change since the 1870s. Instead of seeing the economy as a well-ordered machine, rational, in equilibrium, and in the end relatively lifeless, now economists are beginning to see it as a complex evolving system, imperfect, perpetually constructing itself anew, and brimming with vitality. This new vision helps answer questions economics couldn't answer before.
Why does the stock market show moods and a psychology ? Why do high-tech markets tend to lock in to the dominance of one or two very large players ? How do economies form, and how do they continually alter in structure over time ? In the 1980s and 1990s, economist and complexity theorist W. Brian Arthur led a small team at the Santa Fe Institute to explore questions like these and thereby pioneered this new approach - complexity economics.