Physicists’ Approaches to a Few Economic Problems

Abstract

We review some of the recent approaches and advances made by physicists in some selected problems in economics, given that this interdisciplinary field popularly called “Econophysics” is now two decades old. These approaches, mainly originating from statistical physics, have not been free of drawbacks and criticisms, but we intend to discuss these advancements and highlight some of the promising aspects of this research. We hope the readers will be able to judge the positive impact that these efforts have created; perhaps even improve the methods and the results or remove the shortcomings, and eventually strengthen the field with their inputs.