The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today's financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession-but not our economics. The End of Theory discusses why the human condition and the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model-and the theory behind it-useless for dealing with financial crises. What model should replace it? None. At least not any version we've been using for the past two hundred years. Richard Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics, one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans, not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are. Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics, The End of Theory offers a novel perspective and more realistic framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again.