Commerce, Complexity, and Evolution

Commerce, Complexity, and Evolution is a significant contribution to the new paradigm straddling economics, finance, marketing, and management, which acknowledges that commercial systems are evolutionary systems, and must therefore be analyzed using evolutionary tools. Evolutionary systems display complicated behaviors that are to a significant degree generated endogenously, rather than being solely the product of exogenous shocks, hence the conjunction of complexity with evolution. The papers in this volume consider a wide range of systems, from the entire economy at one extreme to the behavior of single markets at the other.

Paul A. Samuelson is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1970 he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. His landmark 1947 book, "Foundations of Economic Analysis," based upon his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard University, established him as "the economists' economist" by raising the standards of the entire profession. Paul Samuelson's classic textbook, "Economics," first published in 1948, is among the most successful textbooks ever published in the field.

William A. Barnett is Oswald Distinguished Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Kansas. He is Editor of the monograph series International "Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics," and Editor of the journal, "Macroeconomic Dynamics," He has published 17 books and over 130 articles in professional journals.