(1) OECD Development Centre – CEPREMAP, 94, rue Chardon Lagache, F-75016 Paris, France (e-mail: irene.hors@oecd.org), FR;(2) CNRS – CEPREMAP, 142, rue du Chevaleret, F-75013 Paris, France (e-mail: lordon@cepremap.msh-paris.fr), FR
Abstract:
The aim of the present work is to scrutinise the economic use of phase transitions formalisms and to assess their relevance.
The formal correspondence between the issue of micro-macro passage when agents are interacting and the physics problem of
phase transition is first set out. The second section presents two formal tools likely to be associated with these problems
and to exhibit the typical phenomena of phase transition. It is then possible to highlight the key points upon which the phase
transition phenomena in these formal representations rely, and then to assess the relevance of their economic “counterparts”
associated with these crucial characteristics. A more general appraisal of these formalisms for economics is finally sketched.