Minds and markets as complex systems: an emerging approach to cognitive economics

Published on August 10, 2024

Cognitive economics is an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses the tools of cognitive science to study economic and social decision-making. Although most strains of cognitive economics share commitments to bridging levels of analysis (cognitive, behavioral, and systems) and embracing interdisciplinary approaches, we review a newer strand of cognitive economic thinking with a further commitment: conceptualizing minds and markets each as complex adaptive systems. We describe three ongoing research programs that strive toward these goals: (i) studying narratives as a cognitive and social representation used to guide decision-making; (ii) building cognitively informed agent-based models; and (iii) understanding markets as an extended mind – the Market Mind Hypothesis – analyzed using the concepts, methods, and tools of Coordination Dynamics.

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