Home

WP # 2: Connection to economic policy makers

WP2 provides a more intimate connection of STREPs to policy makers especially in within economic institutions (national banks, anti-trust authorities, etc). Here we are speaking about a more technical level and about going beyond just generic acquaintance. We propose short series of mutual literacy courses given between economists and STREP people. We also support partially the NEW2006 conference and seminars to various economic and policy making institutions. We introduce the relevant STREPs concepts and techniques in the daily thinking and action of economic policy planners. This helps to promote the use of the techniques of the STREPs in their areas of research and in their policy decision. We intend to measure the success by the persistent presence and the continuing partnership of STREP researchers with a few influential planers.

Leading institution:

UNISA - UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI SALERNO - FISCIANO (SA), ITALY

WP leader

Prof. Pasquale Perisco ppersic(at)unisa.it

Project Manager:

Dr. Marisa Faggini mfaggini(at)unisa.it

Objectives

Transfer of some economics grammar to complexity scientists community. Economy is an area in which complexity is a key issue; in fact, economic systems are made of a large number of interacting co-adapting agents that display surprising self-organizing features and macroscopic order in spite of the underlying disorder among its constituents. This implies strong consequences for description, prediction, and control of economic systems. Complexity models and tools are increasingly important in economics background in order to model the economic behaviour and in order to implement the right organization, strategies and decisions, and this is a common theme to many of the STREPs.

As opposed to more classical approaches, complexity models allow:

  • to introduce heterogeneous economic agents behaviour,
  • to help studying effects of interactions among these agents, in order to have truly dynamical path and not repeated dynamic path as it is usually performed in economic dynamic modelling,
  • to explore non analytic solutions, allowing analysis of unstable paths.

In order to exploit this potential, one has to overcome the isolation between the various sectors: banks (+investments funds), government agencies (+ policy makers) and academics.

This WP is aimed at implementing the transfer of knowledge from complexity scientists and STREP research to economists, managers and policy makers. To achieve it, complexity scientists have to become aware of the “grammar” of economics and of the ranking of questions economic agents have. We encourage and support initiatives in application areas of common strategic interest between those sectors. In particular we are developing synergy between already existing activities, such as the STREPs, through coordination of implementation of specific activities such as workshop, conferences, seminars, personnel exchange.

The objectives are:

  • to spread in Europe the complex approach in economics, with the purpose to change the way in which the economic phenomena are described, forecasted and controlled,
  • to make researchers aware of research conducted by other groups, for example thematic integration of the different STREPs,
  • to disseminate of the results of these researches to a wider range of application areas.
  • to transfer “complexity knowledge” to economic policy makers,
  • to include economic practice among the fields studied by complexity.

About first aspect we want to grasp a better understanding of economic mechanisms and to enhance the capabilities to foresee and capture agents' behaviours and economic variables. This will lead to improved economic policies and realise better and more efficient economies.

The second one is realised by organising meetings. These have the main objective to highlight possible new pathways for the complexity research, in particular the STREPs, and if necessary the suggestion of new “entrants”. The idea is to initiate meetings by which to improve communication, to develop better mutual knowledge and trust-building through a mutual learning process and systematic exchange of information. Of course these activities are implemented at an international interdisciplinary level.

Instruments:

Workshop
workshops of “complexity” people and STREP members to members of economic institutions will be organized. The idea is to create meetings by which to improve communication, to develop better mutual knowledge and trust-building through a mutual learning process, systematic exchange of information.
  • Economists from (mostly) public institution explain their role, strategies and aims, in order to understand how they structure their decision making.
  • Practitioners (e.g. business people) describe their environment, objectives and language.
  • http://www.new-conference.org/ecople/index.html

International Conference New 2008

Science of complexity provides, if not a unified approach, at least common tools to tackling complex problems in various scientific domains. Generally, complexity is considered a fundamental challenge to the reductionist approach in science as a whole and to its ideas of certainty and randomness.

The aim of Ecople was not so much the dissemination of the complex approach to but the examination of this approach as an evolution of economic thought starting from tradition. The idea was to make an intimate and critical reflection about that.
The workshop was characterised by comparison of two aspects: traditional and complex showing the different solutions and effects that the two approaches could obtain. The key objectives of the workshop was to foster inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary dialogue for comparing the two approaches.

The objective was to provide a forum where participants and STREP members have access to and can discuss the many fascinating methodologies and techniques already on offer, their consequence, as well as seeing what is being developed or is just over the horizon. At present, very few applicative economic controls are based on this new approach. This conference focused mostly on the emerging application domains and promotes interdisciplinary discussion evaluating the recent complex approach developments in sciences and in particular STREP research, and identifying methodological approaches that can be applied in Economics.

Scientists and researchers from all disciplines with applications in economics were sharing their ideas, methods and experiences across a number of fields.The experience that participants obtained was: to analyze economic phenomena applying the methodologies of STREP research and pure scientific disciplines; to monitor the dynamic of economic variables using “complex” tools (chaos theory, neural networks, fractal analysis, fuzzy sets, genetic algorithms, etc.); to elaborate “complex” strategies for optimizing the decision-making processes in the public management; to suggest to the private management (small and big companies, trade unions etc,) decision making strategies, considering some fundamental features of economic phenomena (irreversibility, uncertainty, auto-organization, complex behaviors); to develop an active integration between academic researches such as the STREPs and their potential applications by public and private enterprises.

This event was restricted to around 30 participants to encourage as much critical discussion as possible. The contribution of GIACS was only a part of the conference budget.

DELIVERABLES