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Complexity and Simplicity in Economic Design

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The Future of Economic Design

Part of the book series: Studies in Economic Design ((DESI))

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Abstract

As more and more economic activity moves to the Internet, familiar economic mechanisms are being deployed at unprecedented scales of size, speed, and complexity. In many cases this new complexity becomes the defining feature of the deployed economic mechanism and the quantitative difference becomes a key qualitative one. We suggest to study this complexity and understand in which cases and to what extent it is necessary.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An existing research field often termed “Complexity Economics” applies notions and ways of thinking from “Complexity Science” (e.g. James Gleick 1997) to economic systems. The suggestion here however is to proceed in a different direction, one whose view of “complexity” is taken from theoretical computer science rather than from physics.

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Correspondence to Noam Nisan .

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Nisan, N. (2019). Complexity and Simplicity in Economic Design. In: Laslier, JF., Moulin, H., Sanver, M., Zwicker, W. (eds) The Future of Economic Design. Studies in Economic Design. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18050-8_21

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