"Paul Ormerod, renowned as the thinking person's economist, tears up conventional wisdom and explains why the economy is so much more than the sum of its parts. Taking in the latest scientific, social and mathematical theories, Ormerod argues that the economy must be viewed as more like a living organism than a machine. Like society itself, it is a complex system, living at the edge of chaos."--BOOK JACKET. "For economics, the implications of complexity theory are enormous. Paul Ormerod is the first to think them through. He suggests that both left- and right-wing policies on such issues as unemployment, poor regions or lone parents have been doomed to a very high rate of failure. Much of the control that governments believe they exercise over the economy and society is illusory. Instead government ministers - and people in the business world - need to adopt quite different mindsets and less heavy-handed approaches. Hence 'Butterfly Economics'."--BOOK JACKET.