Cooperation and self-organized criticality for studying economic crises

Abstract

The economics appears to have not paid the required attention and research effort for understanding the destructive phenomena in economic systems. Relying on various widely accepted models and theories that practically avoid the occurrence of failures, depressions, crises and crashes the economic science is incomplete and clearly needs a major reorientation and a change of focus from the deterministic to the holistic perspective. The causes of unpredictable behaviour in economic systems are investigated and the solutions that can prevent these phenomena are searched for. A new economic model inspired by the paradigm of complex systems based on a connective structure is introduced. Interesting complex behaviour emerges from the simple interactions between the agents. A new, unconventional, cause for economic crises is identified and described. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.