Qualitative and quantitative methods in complex socio-economic systems

Excerpt

Several phenomena of real world and many concrete problems, in different contexts, can be addressed through the concept of “complex system”, i.e. a multiplicity of agents interacting both among themselves and with the environment they are embedded in. This is confirmed by the continuously growing interest showed by the scientific community towards “complexity” and its applications to real issues. Moreover, in recent years the toolbox of both qualitative and quantitative models designed to describe and better understand complex systems has found various fields of application, particularly within the socio-economic area. Network models, stochastic and dynamics systems, social network analysis, multivariate statistics, inference and stochastic processes, fuzzy theory, relational calculus, partial order theory, multi-criteria decision methods... all of these tools find their place in the study of real complex systems. In this Special Issue, mainly dedicated to complex socio-economic, financial and environmental problems, you will find an application for most of them. …