The Santa Fe Institute, founded after a small meeting in 1987, paved the way for interdisciplinary collaboration in understanding complex systems.
Traditional economic assumptions were questioned at the Santa Fe meeting, leading to the development of complexity economics.
Deep dives
The Birth of the Santa Fe Institute
This podcast episode explores how W. Brian Arthur's journey in economics led him to the Santa Fe Institute. In 1987, Arthur received an invitation to a small meeting in Santa Fe, organized by Ken Arrow and funded by John Reed. The meeting aimed to bring together physicists, scientists, and economists to exchange ideas and explore new approaches to economics. During the meeting, Arthur presented his concept of increasing returns, which received positive feedback from the physicists. The meeting sparked the beginning of the Santa Fe Institute and set the stage for interdisciplinary collaboration in understanding complex systems.
Challenging Traditional Economic Assumptions
At the meeting in Santa Fe, W. Brian Arthur and other economists realized the limitations of traditional economic assumptions. These assumptions included the belief that all players in the market were identical, that individuals were hyper-rational, and that markets always reached equilibrium. Physicists, on the other hand, were more accustomed to dealing with systems that had positive feedbacks and non-linear stochastic processes. The economists began to question these assumptions and recognize the need for a more realistic and dynamic approach to economics.
Modeling the Stock Market and the Emergence of Complexity Economics
Following the meeting, W. Brian Arthur and John Holland developed a computer model of the stock market, incorporating ideas of agent-based learning and adaptation. The model revealed patterns of bubbles, crashes, and nonlinear behavior that resembled real-world stock markets. By allowing agents to learn and adapt from their past behavior, the model showed how a system with diverse agents could exhibit complex behavior. This marked the birth of complexity economics, a new approach that departed from traditional neoclassical economics and embraced the study of complex, non-linear systems.
In our last episode, we heard from W. Brian Arthur, who shared his journey in economics as he studied increasing returns. Now, Brian's going to take us to 1987, to a small meeting in the Rockies in Santa Fe. At this time, he was struggling to gain recognition for his work within the economics community, but it was when Brian went to what would become the Santa Fe Institute that things really kicked off.
In this episode, you're going to hear again from W. Brain Arthur, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Researcher at Palo Alto Research Center, as he remembers the early days of the Santa Fe Institute. From the early meetings of economists, physicists, and a biologist that started it all, to an early model Brian built of a stock market that was unique to any models before it — because this model included booms and busts.