HiPhiS Seminar: “Emerging Phenomena in Economics – The Case of Institutions”

Tuesday, June 20, 2017, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
, IAE, Robert Reix Lecture Hall, Building 29, Triolet Campus.
Inter-university Seminar on the History and Philosophy of Science, 2017 Cycle: “Causes, Foundations, Origins.”
Lecture presented by Bernard Walliser, economist, Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS, Paris Sciences Économiques, ENS Paris.

Abstract:

In the physical and social sciences, the concept of emergence refers to the difficulty of modeling macroscopic phenomena based on the properties of underlying microscopic entities. This difficulty may be epistemic in nature or, more fundamentally, ontological, affecting both concepts and relationships. Such a phenomenon is illustrated by the spontaneous emergence of institutions in a society, such as the market or currency. An institution serves to coordinate the actions of agents in the face of failures that can be analyzed within the framework of game theory. Any institution thus appears as a behavioral norm that supports a particular equilibrium in a game. The genesis of this equilibrium can occur through education (via the agents’ sophisticated reasoning alone) or through evolution (via the agents’ learning processes).
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