In his new book Making Sense of Chaos, J. Doyne Farmer presents a scientific challenge for economics and finance. Farmer, a leader in complexity science and chaos theory, argues that by applying complex systems science to economic activity, we can build more realistic models and simulations of the global economy that align with the complexity of our interconnected world.

On April 4, Farmer will be joined by discussants Alma Steingart, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, and Michael Woodford, John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy and Chair of the Economics Department; Steingart, an intellectual historian who studies the interaction between politics and mathematical rationalities, and Woodford, a macroeconomist and monetary theorist, will discuss Farmer’s book. Should it change the way we think about and interact with economic models? What does this mean for a world so intimately connected by these fields?

The conversation will be chaired and moderated by Suresh Naidu, Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University, and Co-director of the Center for Political Economy at Columbia World Projects, Columbia Global.

The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Political Economy (CPE), the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Program for Economic Research (PER).