NONLINEAR DYNAMICS IN ECONOMIC RESEARCH

In the article the author gives an overview of recent empirical resear ch in the field of non-linear dynamics and chaos theories. He focuses especially on research carried out in Sweden. He also outlines the dif ferences between the theoretical foundations in ''traditional'' econom ic theory, based on Newtonian mechanics, and the ''new'' economic theo ry based on nonlinear models. The increased interest in this type of m odels is, according to the author, partly due to better knowledge of m athematics among economists, to better simulation techniques and to th e availability of good data. However, the most important reason for th e rapidly growing interest in non-linear dynamics and chaos theories i s simply that many economic features are better explained with non-lin ear models than with linear models.