Economics as energy framework: Complexity, turbulence, financial crises, and protectionism

John Rutledge

Review of Financial Economics, 2015, vol. 25, issue C, 10-18

Abstract: This paper presents a framework for thinking about economic growth, trade, and capital flows viewed as transformations of current and vintage solar energy, stored in the form of natural resources, human capital, physical capital and technology described by the laws of thermodynamics. Recent developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics (NET) show how efficient global capital markets and high-speed communications networks accelerate energy flow and growth but also create turbulence, financial crisis, protectionism and conflict. The paper discusses the role that NET can play in helping us understand stock market bubbles and financial crises.

Keywords: Non-equilibrium; Turbulence; Financial crisis; Thermodynamics; Complexity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 G11 G15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1058330015000178
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:revfin:v:25:y:2015:i:c:p:10-18

DOI: 10.1016/j.rfe.2015.02.003

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Financial Economics is currently edited by T. K. Mukherjee and G. Whitney

More articles in Review of Financial Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().