It is clear that what we know as business economics, the theory that forms the basis of our managerial thinking, cannot hold any more within a quantum interpretation of the world, other than as an exception to, or a specific case of, a more general rule. In this chapter I suggest the framework of a new kind of economic thinking that fits the quantum interpretation and that allows us to gain a deeper insight into business practice. In the first part of the chapter I will critically summarize what we know as business economics, in order to illustrate, in the second part of the chapter, with some examples, how a quantum interpretation sheds new light on our experienced reality.
It is clear that what we know as business economics, the theory that forms the basis of our managerial thinking, cannot hold any more within a quantum interpretation of the world, other than as an exception to, or a specific case of, a more general rule. In this chapter I suggest the framework of a new kind of economic thinking that fits the quantum interpretation and that allows us to gain a deeper insight into business practice. In the first part of the chapter I will critically summarize what we know as business economics, in order to illustrate, in the second part of the chapter, with some examples, how a quantum interpretation sheds new light on our experienced reality.
Abstract This is the world’s first general-audience work to systematically rewrite the underlying logic of economics through quantum thinking. Since Adam Smith, economics has rested on the foundation of Newtonian mechanism: human beings are rational atoms skilled at calculation, resources are scarce stocks with fixed attributes, prices tend toward equilibrium, and markets clear automatically. Yet the rise of behavioral economics shattered the myth of homo economicus, and the 2008 financial crisis, platform economies, free goods, asset-price bubbles, and the repeated tug-of-war between inflation and expectations have again and again exposed the limits of the classical framework’s explanatory power. The problem is not that a particular conclusion needs patching; it is that the entire worldview needs updating. This book argues that what quantum mechanics contributes to economics is not a set of fashionable metaphors, but a rigorous intellectual structure for handling multiple coexisting possibilities, observation that participates in generation, relations that precede entities, and a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. From this perspective, resources are probability clouds of possibility waiting to be activated by cognition, and scarcity is the result of observational collapse; human nature is a superposition of the rational and the irrational; decision-making is measurement rather than revelation; supply and demand are mutually entangled, and prices oscillate around coherent states rather than settling at static equilibrium; money is an entangled carrier of trust, and institutions are the coherent emergence of economic systems. The book consists of an introduction and six parts comprising forty-two chapters. Part I accomplishes the worldview leap from Newton to the quantum; Part II reinterprets individual choice and cost; Part III dissects the entanglement mechanism of supply, demand, and price; Part IV examines money, cycles, and market networks; Part V rebuilds the theory of value and welfare; Part VI leads to the emergent landscape of property rights, policy, and institutional civilization. Each chapter follows a “break before build” approach: first dismantling a widely held classical myth, then offering a more explanatory answer within the quantum framework, supplemented by real cases spanning ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign history, thought experiments, comparative charts, and chapter-end key takeaways, discussion questions, and further reading. With masterful and penetrating prose, the author makes cutting-edge theory accessible and compelling. Whether you are a researcher or graduate student in economics, management, finance, or decision science, or a general reader hoping to see through the workings of wealth, markets, and society, this book will change the lenses through which you view the world—afterward, the economic world will never look the same.
Abstract Since Adam Smith, economics has erected a grand edifice upon the foundations of rational agents, equilibrium analysis, and linear causality; however, the 2008 global financial crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic have successively revealed its fundamental limitations when confronted with complex economic phenomena: bubbles that ought not to have existed, crises unforeseen by equilibrium models, non-linear ruptures brought about by technological revolutions, and self-fulfilling expectations—all of which call for a richer theoretical language. This book serves as the foundational introduction to the "Quantum Economics Textbook Series," as well as the first gateway into this entire series. It introduces the methodological framework, mathematical apparatus, and philosophical insights of quantum mechanics to economic analysis, grounding its approach in the core proposition of a practical ontology—that human economic practice itself possesses quantum attributes such as superposition, entanglement, constructibility, uncertainty, and emergence—thereby reconstructing the economic world as a quantum process of superposition and evolution. Six core concepts—superposition, entanglement, measurement collapse, the uncertainty principle, quantum transitions, and emergence—run throughout the work. Quantum economics does not represent a simple negation of classical theory; rather, it constitutes a dialectical sublation: under the classical limit—where decoherence is complete, the measurement basis is fixed, and entanglement vanishes—quantum theory precisely reduces to classical theory. This book comprises five parts and thirty chapters: Part I establishes the paradigm shift and theoretical framework, covering critiques of Newton's worldview, the quantum worldview, a foundational conceptual framework, mathematical foundations, and research methodologies; Part II reconstructs quantum microeconomic theory, encompassing consumers, producers, pricing, markets, the wave-particle duality of markets, quantum games, and welfare economics; Part III builds quantum macroeconomic theory, addressing national income accounting, money, inflation, economic cycles, policy, and open economies; Part IV explores quantum finance and market dynamics, including asset pricing, portfolio management, market sentiment, risk management, and trading theory; Part V extends the scope to organizations, innovation, institutions, development, economic ethics, and the digital economy, while offering insights into the future of this discipline. This volume is intended for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in economics and related fields, and serves as the essential first volume in the quantum economics series.
This volume of the Quantum Economics Textbook Series is devoted to quantum human economics. For more than a century, mainstream economics has imagined its object as a clockwork: an agent is endowed with complete and stable preferences and full information, solves for a unique optimum under given constraints, and the market glides toward equilibrium along a mechanical orbit. With the solemnity of its logic and the beauty of its geometry, this system has become the gateway through which generation after generation enters the discipline. Yet precisely at the foundation of this system the cracks have grown unmistakable. Classical models, at the level of their axioms, delete superposition, interference, entanglement, measurement collapse, and the waxing and waning of coherence; they therefore struggle to accommodate multiple equilibria, path dependence, network effects, herding, critical collapse, and deep uncertainty. The quantum reconstruction offered here does not treat quantum physics as an ornamental metaphor. It re-founds, on the ground of practical ontology, the mathematical and conceptual architecture that quantum theory has forged for a complex world, and transplants it onto quantum human economics. Classical and neoclassical insights are recovered as special cases in the limit of complete decoherence. The whole book unfolds in a unified state–operator–evolution formalism. Each chapter first explains the classical theory thoroughly, then presents an original quantum construction, rigorous derivation, a real historical case, and a dialogue with the great economists; equations are rendered precisely as native Word math objects, and figures and tables are drawn expressly to support the argument. The book suits undergraduates building intuition, graduate students and researchers advancing to the frontier, and practitioners in policy and business.
Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the science of quantum mechanics and its potential business applications. It discusses the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme and other national initiatives to develop and adopt quantum technologies. The chapter discusses some basic principles of quantum mechanics, and why they could lead to economic and societal benefits, the chapter introduces an analytical framework for understanding business model innovation and explores key issues from a business and economic research perspective. Itoutlinesanumberofhistoricalcasestudiesofmajortechnologicaltransitions to provide the analytical lens for understanding the socio-technical and economic aspects of adopting quantum technologies on industry and society.
Abstract Foundations of Quantum Economics unfolds a coherent theoretical thread, replacing the rational-agent premise of mainstream economics with the quantum-person hypothesis: before observation, decision-makers sustain multiple conflicting options encoded in probability amplitudes, and a decision corresponds to collapse triggered by measurement. The book first lays cognitive and mathematical foundations, demonstrating that human judgement inherently exhibits quantum features including superposition, interference and order dependence. Classical probability theory fails for non-commutative economic events, making Hilbert spaces and probability amplitudes indispensable languages for economic inquiry. It then reconstructs causality, information, uncertainty and risk, arguing that economic causes are not uniquely fixed before the collapse of consensus; uncertainty is endogenous to the system, and risk represents the spread of superposed distributions rather than exogenous noise. Built upon this architecture, the work revisits core microeconomic notions such as value, utility, game interaction, supply and demand, property rights, institutions and innovation. All conventional theories are recovered as special limits under zero interference and single eigenstates, while superposition and entanglement furnish fresh explanatory power for economic anomalies. The analysis further expands into macroeconomics, interpreting growth, business cycles, money, fiscal policy, trade and welfare as coherent superposition, phase transition and collapse of collective cognition and consensus, and concludes with the renovation of econometrics and economic governance. The book’s central thesis holds that superposition, interference, observation and collapse are not metaphors borrowed from quantum physics, but intrinsic properties of human cognition and economic practice. Economic realities are not predetermined facts waiting to be discovered; instead, they are generated through human cognition, consensus and practice in the act of measurement. Quantum economics is far more than a cosmetic revision of existing models. It constitutes a shift of research programme, abandoning Laplacian determinism and reconceiving the economy as an open, generative process. The book articulates five interconnected layers: the quantum person as ontological starting point, quantum features of cognition, superposition of collective consensus, endogenous uncertainty, and quantuminformed governance. It reminds researchers and policymakers that economic observation and policy intervention are performative, capable of reshaping the very system they examine. Economics abandons the pursuit of a single, determinate optimum and embraces endogenous uncertainty; policymakers cease to be omniscient system engineers and become prudent stewards of consensus and designers of measurement bases. This volume establishes the unified bedrock for the whole quantum economics series and calls for a new, more honest and realistic economics embedded within the economic process itself.