Reconstructing Macroeconomics: A Perspective from Statistical Physics and Combinatorial Stochastic Processes

The authors reconceptualize existing macroeconomics by treating equilibria as statistical distributions, not as fixed points.

Masanao Aoki is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is past President of the Society for Economic Dynamics and Control, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Fellow of the IEEE Control Systems Society. Currently Associate Editor of the journal Macroeconomic Dynamics, published by Cambridge University Press, Professor Aoki also served as Editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and the International Economic Review. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Modeling Aggregate Behavior and Fluctuations in Economics, which won the 2003 Nihon Keizai Shinbun-Center for Japanese Economic Research Prize for best book in economics by a Japanese scholar (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and New Approaches to Macroeconomic Modeling (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Hiroshi Yoshikawa is Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978 and has also taught at Osaka University and the State University of New York at Albany. Professor Yoshikawa is the author of seven books, one of which received the Nikkei Award and another of which received the Yoshino-Yomiuri Award, in addition to a textbook in macroeconomics and the frequently cited Macroeconomics and the Japanese Economy (1995). He is a member of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy of the Japanese Government's Cabinet Office, and served in 2002 as president of the Japanese Economic Association.