Quantum Economics: A General Course
Huilin Zhao
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.
•Oct 21, 2026•0 citations