The Self-Organizing Economy
The book . . . is . . . a piece of serious popular science writing; the author tries   to be engaging and clear but is not afraid to use a little mathematics. Krugman's   exuberance in describing his work helps get the reader over the rough spots. As a set of   lectures aimed at people with backgrounds in economics, it also includes some technical   sections that would be hard going for the uninitiated. Fortunately, these can be skipped   with little loss of meaning.. . . Krugman's general approach seems . . . plausible . . . for developing a general   understanding of self-organization and complexity, for two reasons. First, he is willing to   suppose that there is more than one process going on in the world, as shown by his   instability and growth models. It really does seem absurd to suppose that the power law   for word-use frequencies in English is generated by the same kind of process that   determines earthquakes. SOC, order from instability, and Simon-style growth models   appear to be independent explanations for power-law regularities. Second, Krugman   starts with a more grounded understanding of the phenomena he studies, so that he knows   better what features of reality are lost when he simplifies things in his models.