J. P. Bouchaud: Econophysics - still fringe after 30 years?

<...> Unfortunately, this cross-fertilisation did not really follow through, at least not on a large scale, in spite of the involvement of larger and larger cohorts of physicists in the development of what is now called "econophysics" and "sociophysics". Until recently, mainstream economists have essentially muddled through along the same well-trodden path, developing monetary policy tools based on the idea that agents are rational calculators with infinite foresight, who optimize their "utility function" assuming others will do the same. In 2003, Robert Lucas - one of the dons of Rational Expectations and Nobel Prize recipient in 1995 - claimed that "the central problem of depression prevention had been solved". We know all too well what happened in 2008. <...>

Or so writes J. P. Bouchaud in [1], which is one of the best recently written introductions to econophysics and sociophysics. We invite you to read it on arxiv (see reference for the link) or find it on Europhysics News.

References

• J. P. Bouchaud. Econophysics: Still fringe after 30 years? To appear in Europhysics News. arXiv:1901.03691 [physics.soc-ph].