The overall aim of this book an outcome of the European FP7 FET Open NESS project is to
contribute to the ongoing effort to put the quantitative social sciences on a proper footing
for the 21st century. A key focus is economics and its implications on policy making where
the still dominant traditional approach increasingly struggles to capture the economic
realities we observe in the world today - with vested interests getting too often in the way of
real advances.Insights into behavioral economics and modern computing techniques have made
possible both the integration of larger information sets and the exploration of disequilibrium
behavior. The domain-based chapters of this work illustrate how economic theory is the only
branch of social sciences which still holds to its old paradigm of an equilibrium science - an
assumption that has already been relaxed in all related fields of research in the light of
recent advances in complex and dynamical systems theory and related data mining.The other
chapters give various takes on policy and decision making in this context. Written in
nontechnical style throughout with a mix of tutorial and essay-like contributions this book
will benefit all researchers scientists professionals and practitioners interested in
learning about the 'thinking in complexity' to understand how socio-economic systems really
work.
