Attractors, Bifurcations, & Chaos

The present book relies on various editions of my earlier book "e;Nonlinear Economic Dynamics"e;, first published in 1989 in the Springer series "e;Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems"e;, and republished in three more, successively revised and expanded editions, as a Springer monograph, in 1991, 1993, and 1997, and in a Russian translation as "e;Nelineynaia Economicheskaia Dinamica"e;. The first three editions were focused on applications. The last was differ- ent, as it also included some chapters with mathematical background mate- rial -ordinary differential equations and iterated maps -so as to make the book self-contained and suitable as a textbook for economics students of dynamical systems. To the same pedagogical purpose, the number of illus- trations were expanded. The book published in 2000, with the title "e;A ttractors, Bifurcations, and Chaos -Nonlinear Phenomena in Economics"e;, was so much changed, that the author felt it reasonable to give it a new title. There were two new math- ematics chapters -on partial differential equations, and on bifurcations and catastrophe theory -thus making the mathematical background material fairly complete. The author is happy that this new book did rather well, but he preferred to rewrite it, rather than having just a new print run. Material, stemming from the first versions, was more than ten years old, while nonlinear dynamics has been a fast developing field, so some analyses looked rather old-fashioned and pedestrian. The necessary revision turned out to be rather substantial.