Beyond econophysics (not to mention mainstream economics)

Abstract

Econophysics has produced innovative and empirically relevant results in at least four areas of research: financial markets, growth and distribution of firms and countries, the distribution of income and wealth, and contagion, robustness and resilience of networks. All these results are inexplicable by the actual mainstream economic model. Yet econophysics requires not only a new economy, but also a “new” physics, which is based on non-ergodicity, on social dynamics whose elementary constituents are heterogeneous interacting social agents linked by networks.