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From Galileo to Modern Economics

The Italian Origins of Econophysics

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  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Gianfranco Tusset

    1. University of Padova, Padova, Italy

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  • Provides new insight into the origins of the econophysics movement
  • Situates the contributions of authors who might be considered to be econophysicists in the modern sense, in context with earlier Italian contributions to scientific work on scientific data
  • Addresses an under-represented area of the market

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Introduction: A Bridge Between Past and Present

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 1-8

  3. Galilean Economics

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 9-44

  4. Engineering Economics

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 45-63

  5. Wealth Distribution

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 65-86

  6. The Dynamics of Aggregates

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 87-110

  7. Asset Pricing Dynamics

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 111-129

  8. Topological Dynamics

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 131-148

  9. Moving on to Econophysics

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 149-173

  10. Epilogue

    • Gianfranco Tusset
    Pages 175-177

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 179-210
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Keywords

About this book

Empirical laws are rare in economics. This book describes efforts to anchor economic knowledge to invariant empirical laws. It links 17th and 18th century Galilean monetary economists to econophysics, a field that emerged in the mid-1990s. This virtual journey from past to present is charted by episodes on aggregates and empirical primacy. It includes the virtually unknown story of 19th century scholars who, by searching for a stricter mathematical approach, paved the way to an ‘engineering’ view of economics. Then there are celebrities like Pareto and his first empirical law governing the distribution of wealth. Pareto and Amoroso sparked a debate on the skewed distribution that spanned decades, ranging from finance to market transformations, to econophysics, with its concepts and tools inherited from statistical physics. The last stage of the journey goes through econophysics and the recent gradual advances it has made, which show how its position vis-à-vis economics has been changing.

Reviews

“Tusset’s book is a thought-provoking study on the origins and development of the peculiar discipline of econophysics … . This may be the most relevant lesson for econophysicists to take home from this interesting book.” (Enrico Petracca, History of Economic Thought and Policy, Vol. 2, 2019)

“This book takes a fascinating journey through several stylized facts, and the economic foundations theorized by the Italian “economic physics” tradition that has its methodological roots in Galileo. Towering figures - of the likes of Pareto - are seen in a convincing new light, in a scenario where heterogeneity, emergence and complexity converge in the world of econophysics.” (Mauro Gallegati, Professor of Macroeconomics, Polytechnic University of Marche)

 

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Gianfranco Tusset

About the author

Gianfranco Tusset is Associate Professor in History of Economic Thought, University of Padua, Italy.

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