COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1520

Economics: The Next Physical Science?

J. Doyne Farmer, Martin Shubik, and Eric Smith

June 2005

We review an emerging body of work by physicists addressing questions of economic organization and function. We suggest that, beyond simply employing models familiar from physics to economic observables, remarkable regularities in economic data may suggest parts of social order that can usefully be incorporated into, and in turn can broaden, the conceptual structure of physics.

Keywords: Economic theory, Physics, Econo-physics

JEL Classification: B49, C00, G00