Amazon.com Review
The book . . . is . . . a piece of serious popular science writing; the author tries to be engaging and clear but is not afraid to use a little mathematics. Krugman's exuberance in describing his work helps get the reader over the rough spots. As a set of lectures aimed at people with backgrounds in economics, it also includes some technical sections that would be hard going for the uninitiated. Fortunately, these can be skipped with little loss of meaning.
. . . Krugman's general approach seems . . . plausible . . . for developing a general understanding of self-organization and complexity, for two reasons. First, he is willing to suppose that there is more than one process going on in the world, as shown by his instability and growth models. It really does seem absurd to suppose that the power law for word-use frequencies in English is generated by the same kind of process that determines earthquakes. SOC, order from instability, and Simon-style growth models appear to be independent explanations for power-law regularities. Second, Krugman starts with a more grounded understanding of the phenomena he studies, so that he knows better what features of reality are lost when he simplifies things in his models.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Written in an informal and conversational style, The Self-Organizing Economy shows how models of self-organization, "order from stability", can be applied to economic phenomenon. This concept, which has become increasingly influential in the last few years, can explain the formation of cities and business cycles. The book includes powerful insights of conventional economic analysis and strands from many disciplines, from location theory to biology, to create a surprising new view of how the economy forms structures in space and time.
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