The End Of Theory: Financial Crises, The Failure Of Economics, And
The Sweep Of Human Interaction

Product Description

An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today's financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession--but not our economics In The End of Theory Richard Bookstaber discusses why the human condition & the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model--and the theory behind it--useless for dealing with financial crises What model should replace it? None At least not any version we've been using for the past two hundred years Instead Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are Bookstaber's groundbreaking paradigm promises to do a far better job at preventing crises & managing those that break out As he explains our varied memories & imaginations color our economic behavior in unexpected hues Agent-based modeling embraces these nuances by avoiding the mechanistic unrealistic structure of our current economic approach Bookstaber tackles issues such as radical uncertainty when circumstances take place beyond our anticipation & emergence when innocent everyday interactions combine to create sudden chaos Starting with the realization that future crises cannot be predicted by the past he proposes an approach that recognizes the human narrative while addressing market realities Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics The End of Theory offers a novel & innovative perspective along with a more realistic & human framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again