Complexity Catastrophes...

On the train down to Oxford I read through almost all of the proceedings from the original Sante Fe Conference on economics as a complex system.  I found the following chapters to be particularly useful for economists:

1. The Evolution of Economic Webs, Stuart Kaufman
2. Persistent Oscillations and Chaos in Economic Models, Michele Boldrin
3. Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms in Economics, W. Brian Arthur
4. Computation and Multiplicity of Economic Equilibria, Timothy J. Kehoe
5. Rational Expectations, Game Theory and Inflationary Inertia, Mario Henrique Simonsen
6. The Global Economy as an Adaptive Process, John H. Holland

Of the above chapters, Kaufman's on the evolution of economic webs is by far the most thought-provoking.  I am particularly fond of his ideas on complexity catastrophes, as they parallel some of my own ideas on the dangers posed by overly dense connectivity in financial networks.