Talk:Quantum economics

This article was nominated for deletion on 9 April 2024. The result of the discussion was merge.

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I prodded the prior version of this page, so I was surprised to see another one appear in my watchlist 3 days later, with completely different content. That a handful of people wrote about applications of quantum physics to economics does not mean that "quantum economics" is an "emerging research field." (I'm an economist who has heard not a word about it) Notability needs to be established beyond the fact that two sets of authors wrote two non-notable books. Otherwise, this page is basically just a synthesis--taking a handful of papers and inferring a research program.

Yes, as soon as you knock one down another pops up! However I believe this one can be better justified because it is not the pet project of a few people, which I believe was a criticism of the earlier page. Instead it represents a consistent approach which has been in development for a number of decades.

First, while the definition of an "emerging research field" is certainly vague, the number of people pursuing this line of research is rather more than a handful. For one thing it includes researchers in quantum finance but also includes others who are not involved in that more specialized area.

"I'm an economist who has heard not a word about it." It is hard for anyone working in a profession as large as economics to be aware of every single development. There are a lot of people working in finance who have never heard of quantum finance either.

"Notability needs to be established beyond the fact that two sets of authors wrote two non-notable books." There are references to four books from respected publishers, as well as a number of papers (I have added a reference to a book by Alexander Wendt). I could add more but the aim was to pull out some of the key ones. I would argue that the notability of these references is adequate for this article, and it is comparable with those used in other articles on similar topics.

"This page is basically just a synthesis" A synthesis is when you "combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." That is not the case here, these references all explicitly address economic problems using a quantum approach.

Sjm3 (talk) 21:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sjm3, when I say "synthesis," here I mean not that you are misrepresenting any of the individual books, and not that you are incorrect to say they are applying quantum physics techniques to economics and finance phenomena, but that the 'synthesis' is taking a handful of unrelated people each having written a book on this and saying that "quantum economics" is a research program. For example, it'd be similarly inappropriate to start a page on "Calculus" immediately after Leibniz and Newton's (independent) first texts on the subject.

Just because a handful of people are engaged in this, doesn't make it a coherent research program, and more importantly, doesn't make it notable. You engage in weaselly text to get around this, such as the line "At the same time, researchers such as economist Martin Shubik were beginning to use the quantum formalism to model the uncertainty of stock markets." Whatever you might think of Shubik's article, it's got 14 citations on Google Scholar--hard to argue that it set a trend for the use of quantum formalism. The Qadir article similarly has 2 citations. The rest have more than this, but still quite few. Wikipedia's notability guidelines for academics very specifically discuss citations as a measure of notability (or significant non-academic impact, but that is lacking here too). — Preceding unsigned comment added by WeakTrain (talk • contribs) 01:59, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I was going by the Wikipedia definition of synthesis which you linked to. I agree that the first couple of articles haven't received much attention, and I am including them, not in order to exaggerate the sense of a unified program, but for historical accuracy. I added a note about Qadir's paper. I also added a reference to an earlier paper by Haven which has more citations, and can certainly add more (he alone has been working in this area for over 15 years). Again, it is not just " a handful of unrelated people" - this might be a multidisciplinary area, but it includes the smaller area of quantum finance plus other work (from those people and others) that does not fit in that narrow specialization.

Sjm3 (talk) 15:27, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

History section is original research.

The History section cites no reference to validate the topics covered. It seems to be a summary of publications on the topic, but the positioning these summaries as "History" is analysis which is not backed up by sources. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This section contains 15 references which validate the topics covered. The editor writes that: "Positioning these summaries as 'History' is analysis which is not backed by sources." The section simply places the contributions in chronological order, which is not usually considered analysis or original research. Would it help to change the title of the section? Sjm3 (talk) 19:56, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The selection of items in a history asserts that they are historically important. Why these papers? Are they really on topic? Are they really first? Such judgements are analysis which we should leave to secondary refs. If there are no secondary refs, then the subject is not notable. We don't need to change the title of the section, we need better content. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:03, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Almost no secondary sources.

The references here include a couple of (lame) news articles, a book, and numerous primary refs. The book is a synopsis of the author's primary work, and as such it is not a truly independent secondary ref. Now I wish I had voted to delete rather than merge. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:47, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have added some more references, including (Holtfort and Horsch, 2020) which gives an overview of quantum economics similar in terms of works covered to the one given in the history section. If any are unsuitable by Wikipedia standards ("lame") then please explain. Note also that the establishment of a new journal, like the one cited from Sage, would obviously involve an external review process for the field as a whole. Sjm3 (talk) 19:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a reference documenting the review before the Sage journal, please add it. Based on the prospectus I saw it seemed to be primarily targeting finance. The announcement of the journal it not itself a sign of anything other than the lead editors ambition and ability to convince. An emerging field is not a notable one for wikipedia, anymore that other kinds of speculation.

I asserted the news articles are lame because they are barely on topic. "Schrodinger markets" is not economics but again finance. Holtfort and Horsch, 2020 is also off topic. What we need are secondary refs about "quantum economics". The only secondary refs are all by David Orrell, a red flag for this topic being fringe. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what kind of document would reference an internal review process by Sage. As for whether the journal focuses on quantum economics, then the journal's name "Quantum Economics and Finance" suggests that it does, and the cited editorial defines the field as follows: "Quantum economics and finance is the application of probability based on projective geometry—also known as quantum probability—to modelling in economics and finance. It draws on related areas such as quantum cognition, quantum game theory, quantum computing, and quantum physics." Note there is not a hard line between economics and finance because e.g. stock markets are a special case of general markets.

While it is true that there is a shortage of secondary references due to this being a new area, I would dispute the assertion that the references given are off topic. The Economist article is cited to back up the point that quantum models of transactions (in stock markets or elsewhere) are compatible with quantum computers. In the (Holtfort and Horsch, 2020) article Section 4 covers many of the same articles and books as cited here, including ones by Baaquie, Haven, Khrennikov, Orrell, Samuelson, and Schaden, so the reference is certainly on topic.

There are a number of related workshops and conferences planned over the next few months (e.g. Workshop on Quantum Economics and Sustainable Futures: Exploring the Intersection of Quantum Computing, Economics, Finance and Society, in Salamanca, Spain) and so I would suggest that the best way to obtain further secondary references of the sort you are looking for would be to put this on hold a short while if that is possible. Sjm3 (talk) 21:25, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion decision review

A proposal was made to delete this page. I contested this on April 15, on the basis that the field has its own journal and so on, but a decision was made on April 16 to merge with Econophysics. This decision appears to be based on a single paper (and the only one published in the last five years) which mentions "quantum econophysics" in the title (Arioli and Valente, 2021). That 2021 paper in turn seems to have got the name "quantum econophysics" either from an unpublished paper from 2007 (Guevara, 2007) or a chapter in a 2014 book (Schinckus, 2014). More recent works do not appear to use this phrase. Quantum economics is distinct from econophysics because it does not focus exclusively on things like financial statistics and time series, but also considers broader effects from quantum social science such as quantum cognition and quantum game theory. It is therefore not appropriate to merge Quantum economics with Econophysics, and I have requested a review of this decision. Sjm3 (talk) 14:32, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unable to verify important reference.

@Sjm3 You added a new paragraph to the intro, but I am not able to verify it. The only ref I found close to the one you added is:

Orrell, David (2024-03-08). "Quantum Economics and Physics". Quantum Economics and Finance. doi:10.1177/29767032241237547. ISSN 2976-7032.

The Sage site only lists 4 articles, 2 by David Orrell. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:41, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The landing page of the website only displays 4 articles. Try selecting "Most read" and then "View all" at the bottom, and you will see there are 7 articles so far, including the reference for the new sentence. I have therefore deleted the one you added, which does not contain that quote. Sjm3 (talk) 17:27, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]