In his Physics of Finance blog, Mark Buchanan responds to those who suggest that physicists are attracted to problems in economics because they think they are smarter than economists.
Writes Buchanan: "I don’t think it’s typical of why some physicists choose to work on problems in economics or finance. Most of the ones I know don’t believe they’re smarter than economists, or better mathematicians, nor do they think economics is somehow 'easy.' They tend to believe, in fact, that economics is harder than physics. Physicists don’t think they’re going to come in and easily work everything out.
"What the physicists DO believe, however, is that markets and economies are great examples of what scientists have come to call “complex systems” — systems of many elements (people, firms, etc.) with strong interactions between those elements which create webs of non-linear feedback."
Read the post (March 28, 2014)