Ebook: Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Social Sciences: Proceedings of the Second Informal Workshop, Held at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, Italy, May 27–30, 1991

This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the "Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Social Sciences" Meeting held at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, on May 27-30, 1991. The Meeting was organized by the National Group "Modelli Nonlineari in Economia e Dinamiche Complesse" of the Italian Ministery of University and SCientific Research, M.U.RS.T. The aim of the Conference, which followed a previous analogous initiative taking place in the very same Certosa, on January 1988*, was the one of offering a come together opportunity to economists interested in a new mathematical approach to the modelling of economical processes, through the use of more advanced analytical techniques, and mathematicians acting in the field of global dynamical systems theory and applications. A basiC underlying idea drove the organizers: the necessity of fOCUSing on the use that recent methods and results, as those commonly referred to the overpopularized label of "Chaotic Dynamics", did find in the social sciences domain; and thus to check their actual relevance in the research program of modelling economic phenomena, in order to individuate and stress promising perspectives, as well as to curb excessive hopes and criticize not infrequent cases where research reduces to mechanical, ad hoc, applications of "a la mode" techniques. In a word we felt the need of looking about the state of the arts in non-linear systems theory applications to economics and social processes: hence the title of the workshop and the volume.

---

This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the "Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Social Sciences" Meeting held at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, May 27-30, 1991. The meeting welcomed contributions from economists interested in developing a new mathematical approach to the modelling of economical processes and mathematicians active in the field of globaldynamical systems theory. The aim of the conference was the one of focusing on the applications of analythical methods which are now commonly referred to the popular label of "chaotic dynamics" in the social sciences domain, and hence to test their actual relevance in describing economic phenomena and to suggest promising perspectives of future research.The volume contains the notes of three minicourses given by R. Abraham, "Economics and the Environment: Global Erodynamic Models", H.-W. Lorenz,"Complexity in Deterministic, Nonlinear Business-Cycle Models", C. Mira, "Fractal "Box-Within-a Box" Bifurcation Structure" and the invited lectures of V. B|hm, "Recurrence in Keynesian Macroeconomic Models", R. Goodwin, "Economic Nonlinear Dynamic Development" and A.G. Malliaris, G.Philippatos, "Random Walk vs. Chaotic Dynamics in Financial Economics". Moreover, it includes 13 contributed papers covering topics from the more significant sectors of economic research where nonlinear dynamic instrumentshave been successfully applied: endogenous cycles, imperfectly competitive economics, real wage dynamics, keynesian business cycle theory, complexity of optimal paths, incompletemarkets, walrasian and non-walrasian equilibria, financial dynamics.