Introduction

In September 1987, twenty people came together at the Santa Fe Institute to talk about "the economy as an evolving, complex system." Ten were theoretical economists, invited by Kenneth J. Arrow, and ten were physicists, biologists, and computer scientists, invited by Philip W. Anderson. The meeting was motivated by the hope that new ideas bubbling in the natural sciences, loosely tied together under the rubric of "the sciences of complexity," might stimulate new ways of thinking about economic problems. The meeting left two legacies. The first was a volume of essays, The Economy as an Evolving Complex System, edited by Arrow, Anderson, and David Pines. The other was the founding, in 1988, of the Economics Program at the Santa Fe Institute, the Institute's first resident research program. This volume, The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II, represents the proceedings of an August 1996 workshop sponsored by the SFI Economics Program.