Résumé
Complex systems theory and evolutionary theory hold important insight for economics, yet to date they have played a limited role in shaping modern economic theory. This chapter reviews different notions of equilibrium and explores four distinct areas relevant to the incorporation of evolutionary and complexity ideas into economics, finance, and policy. It investigates the determinants of major economic transitions, such as the Industrial Revolution or the collapse of the Soviet Union. It asks whether evolutionary processes should lead to an increase in complexity, on average, of economic and social systems over time. It reviews modern theories of group learning in biology, which have both evolutionary and complexity dimensions, to see if they might be relevant to human social institutions, such as firms. It analyzes whether the structure of human interactions or individual human intelligence is primarily responsible for the performance of our institutions. Finally, it finds the methods of evolutionary analysis and of complex systems to be extremely useful in capturing the open-ended, evolving nature of an economy composed of interactive agents and suggests that these methods be used to create more realistic models of actual markets and economies.