ABSTRACT
The Santa Fe Institute, an educational and research organization dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary efforts on problems related to highly complex systems in science and society, sponsored a meeting on "International Finance as a Complex System" at the Rancho Encantado, August 6 and 7, 1986. The major purpose of the meeting was to examine the potential application of some recent developments in the natural sciences, mathematics, and computer technology to certain problems in economics, more specifically to the better understanding and management of world capital flow and debt. John Reed summarized his sense of the meeting by remarking that, on the demand side, it was clearly worth an immense amount of effort to achieve a better understanding of the forces which shape the development of a global economy. Jerry Geist expressed a deep conviction concerning the great importance of the subject, particularly emphasizing the problem of presenting data and arguments for action to public leaders with little technical background.
