This book is a collection of essays which examine how the properties of aggregate variables are influenced by the actions and interactions of heterogenous individuals in different economic contexts. The common denominator of the essays is a critique of the representative agent hypothesis. If this hypothesis were correct, the behaviour of the aggregate variable would simply be the reproduction of individual optimising behaviour. In the methodology of the hard sciences, one of the achievements of the quantum revolution has been the rebuttal of the notion that aggregate behaviour can be explained on the basis of the behaviour of a single unit: the elementary particle does not even exist as a single entity but as a network, a system of interacting units. In this book, new tracks in economics which parallel the developments in physics mentioned above are explored. The essays, in fact are contributions to the analysis of the economy as a complex evolving system of interacting agents.

Since the publication of Keynes' General Theory there has been a steady increase in interest in dynamics. With it has only recently come the realization that linear dynamics are very restrictive. This book is a collection of essays on nonlinear economic dynamics, mostly written very recently. They attempt to combine in one integral whole the analysis of cycles and growth, neither of which ever exists in the absence of the other. The essays cover cyclical and unsteady growth, multisectoral models, discrete time and irregularity, Schumpeter's vision and personal statements.