5 Questions You May Have asked: What is Economic Complexity and Which Countries are Increasing Their Economic Complexity?

In complexity economics, agents differ and in general lack full knowledge of each other and of the situation they are in. Fundamental uncertainty is therefore the norm; ill-defined problems are the norm; and rationality is not necessarily well defined. Agents explore and learn and adapt and open to novel behavior. Outcomes may not be in equilibrium

foundations were laid in Victorian times. Now it is changing radically. Standard economics is suddenly being challenged by a number of new approaches: behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, new institutional economics. One of the new approaches came to life at the Santa Fe Institute: complexity economics.

“The Global Economy as an Adaptive Process,” at seven pages and zero equations, is well worth a read. Holland recounts many, now familiar, difficulties in mathematical analysis of economics that assume linearity, exclusively negative feedback loops, equilibria, and so on, before proposing that the economy is best thought of as what he calls an adap