From catastrophe to chaos : a general theory of economic discontinuities : volume I: mathematics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, and finance

__From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic____Discontinuities__ presents and unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity. From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities presents and unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Discontinuity in Economic Theory and Economic Discontinuities....Pages 1-7 The Mathematics of Discontinuity....Pages 9-68 Discontinuities in Microeconomic Systems....Pages 69-104 Speculative Bubbles and Crashes I: Irrational....Pages 105-121 Speculative Bubbles and Crashes II: Rational and Semi-Rational....Pages 123-159 Catastrophe Theory and Hysteresis in Macroeconomics....Pages 161-173 Chaos Theory and Complex Macroeconomic Dynamics....Pages 175-205 Discontinuity and Capital Theory....Pages 207-227 Back Matter....Pages 229-309