A coherent statistical methodology is necessary for analyzing and understanding complex economic systems characterized by large degrees of freedom with non-trivial patterns of interaction and aggregation across individual components. Such a methodology was arguably present in Classical Political Economy, but was abandoned in the late nineteenth century with a theoretical turn towards a purely mechanical approach to understanding social and economic phenomena. Recent advances in economic theory that draw from information theory and statistical mechanics offers a compelling statistically based approach to understanding economic systems based on a general principle of maximum entropy for doing inference. We offer a brief overview of what we consider the state of maximum entropy reasoning in economic research.

中文翻译：

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最大熵经济学

对于分析和理解以大自由度为特征，各个组成部分之间相互作用和聚合的非平凡模式为特征的复杂经济系统而言，必须采用一致的统计方法。这种方法在古典政治经济学中可以说是存在的，但是在19世纪末期被抛弃了，其理论转向了纯粹的机械方法来理解社会和经济现象。借鉴信息论和统计力学的经济学理论的最新进展提供了一种令人信服的基于统计的方法，可以基于最大熵的一般原理来理解经济系统，以进行推理。我们简要概述了我们在经济研究中认为的最大熵推理状态。