Economics and Thermodynamics

This text aims to offer insights into recent research focusing on the interface between thermodynamics and economics. Although non-equilibrium thermodynamics and self-organization appear to offer more exciting possibilities for economic application, the early papers in the volume demonstrate that economic insights are still derivable from the standpoint of classical thermodynamics. In particular, the analytical framework set out decades ago by John von Neumann is shown to be a source of insights and new perspectives. This book attempts both to promote and evaluate the application of non-equilibrium thermodynamics of economics. The latter part of the book stresses that there are aspects of socioeconomic systems which we cannot understand using only the thermodynamic analogy, although thermodynamic metaphors can still offer us inspiration in formulating unique characterizations of economic complexity and organisation. The emerging fields of artificial life simulation and the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics also have a role to play in the paradigmatic shift which is now found in economics. A great deal of economic wisdom currently contained in orthodox economic thought should be of continued relevance and may constitute much of the distinctiveness of self-organizational processes in the domain of economic analysis.