The term Econophysics was coined by H. Eugene Stanley in 1995 during a statistical physics conference on the Dynamics of Complex Systems in Kolkata, India to refer to the then emerging interdisciplinary field of physicists working on problems in economics and finance. An interdisciplinary area of research straddling computer science, economics, finance, mathematics, and physics; econophysics started out drawing heavily upon theories and methods developed in nuclear physics and statistical physics. From the use of Random Matrix Theory (RMT) to discriminate between signal and noise in financial time series data, to the use of the Ising model and variants to explain stylized facts of stock markets in terms of the microscopic dynamics of traders, econophysicists have since gone on to develop methods and insights inspired by specific problems in econophysics like the DebtRank measure of systemic risk in banking networks and the discovery of unusual Brownian motion dynamics in order books.
As econophysics matures as a field, the Topic Editors feel that some of the methods and insights developed here have the potential to contribute towards deeper understanding in other areas of physics. So far, these methods have not caught on in the broader physics community. The main reason for this is that econophysicists tend to publish in a variety of journals, with diverse audiences. This is the motivation to launch a Research Topic in Frontiers in Physics, read by serious physicists from different research fields, so that econophysics can give back to the broader physics community.
We call this Research Topic ‘From Physics to Econophysics and Back: Methods and Insights’, and wish to solicit three different types of contributions. The first are Reviews on problems where physics methods and models made important contributions to problems in econophysics. The second are Reviews on important discoveries made within econophysics, that have the potential to impact physics research on a broader front. Finally, the third are Original Research papers sharing examples of such econophysics methods and insights applied to physics problems elsewhere.
The term Econophysics was coined by H. Eugene Stanley in 1995 during a statistical physics conference on the Dynamics of Complex Systems in Kolkata, India to refer to the then emerging interdisciplinary field of physicists working on problems in economics and finance. An interdisciplinary area of research straddling computer science, economics, finance, mathematics, and physics; econophysics started out drawing heavily upon theories and methods developed in nuclear physics and statistical physics. From the use of Random Matrix Theory (RMT) to discriminate between signal and noise in financial time series data, to the use of the Ising model and variants to explain stylized facts of stock markets in terms of the microscopic dynamics of traders, econophysicists have since gone on to develop methods and insights inspired by specific problems in econophysics like the DebtRank measure of systemic risk in banking networks and the discovery of unusual Brownian motion dynamics in order books.
As econophysics matures as a field, the Topic Editors feel that some of the methods and insights developed here have the potential to contribute towards deeper understanding in other areas of physics. So far, these methods have not caught on in the broader physics community. The main reason for this is that econophysicists tend to publish in a variety of journals, with diverse audiences. This is the motivation to launch a Research Topic in Frontiers in Physics, read by serious physicists from different research fields, so that econophysics can give back to the broader physics community.
We call this Research Topic ‘From Physics to Econophysics and Back: Methods and Insights’, and wish to solicit three different types of contributions. The first are Reviews on problems where physics methods and models made important contributions to problems in econophysics. The second are Reviews on important discoveries made within econophysics, that have the potential to impact physics research on a broader front. Finally, the third are Original Research papers sharing examples of such econophysics methods and insights applied to physics problems elsewhere.