While it does not reject the existence of an equilibrium, it features a non-equilibrium approach and sees such equilibria as a special case and as an emergent property resulting from complex interactions between economic agents.
[5] More generally, complexity economics models are often used to study how non-intuitive results at the macro-level of a system can emerge from simple interactions at the micro level.
This avoids assumptions of the representative agent method, which attributes outcomes in collective systems as the simple sum of the rational actions of the individuals.
In Hausmann, Hidalgo et al.,[7] the authors show that the List of countries by future GDP (based on ECI) estimates ability of the ECI to predict future GDP per capita growth is between 5 times and 20 times larger than the World Bank's measure of governance, the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) and standard measures of human capital, such as years of schooling and cognitive ability.
The authors of this alternative formula claim it has several advantages: The metrics for country fitness and product complexity have been used in a report[13] of the Boston Consulting Group on Sweden growth and development perspectives.
Some of the 20th century intellectual background of complexity theory in economics is examined in Alan Marshall (2002) The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press: London.
Then, the same technique was employed to detect transitions from laminar (i.e. regular) to turbulent (i.e. chaotic) phases as well as differences between macroeconomic variables and highlight hidden features of economic dynamics.
[40][41] In 1995-1997 publications, Scientific American journalist John Horgan "ridiculed" the movement as being the fourth C among the "failed fads" of "complexity, chaos, catastrophe, and cybernetics".
[5] In 1997, Horgan wrote that the approach had "created some potent metaphors: the butterfly effect, fractals, artificial life, the edge of chaos, self organized criticality.
"[5] Nonetheless, Rosser wrote that "there is a strain of common perspective that has been accumulating as the four C's of cybernetics, catastrophe, chaos, and complexity emerged, which may now be reaching a critical mass in terms of influencing the thinking of economists more broadly.