Since Louis Bachelier's thesis in 1900 — a theory of Brownian motion 5 years before Einstein — our understanding of financial markets has progressed reasonably. Over the past few decades, financial engineering has grown considerably and has unfortunately gone beyond our comprehension. The inadequacy of the models used to describe financial markets may have contributed to financial crises that have a significant impact on our economy. From a physicist's perspective, understanding the formation of prices in financial markets — how markets absorb and process information from thousands of individual agents to arrive at a “fair” price — is a fascinating challenge. Statistical physics has taught us that systems made up of a large number of individual entities can have robust (often unexpected) patterns that exceed individual behaviors or, as P. W. Anderson says, “More is different” (Science 177, 1972). Understanding the destabilization mechanisms inherent in the criticality of financial markets is a question of undeniable economic and societal importance. We want to promote the sharing of knowledge and exchanges between the professional world and the scientific community in the microstructure of financial markets, and more generally on issues relating to complex economic and social systems.

Objectives

Contribute, through research activities, to the development of knowledge in the microstructure of financial markets, and more generally in complex economic and social systems Encourage, through teaching, students to innovation in these fields Disseminate these research works and experiences in the industrial and scientific world, and more generally through publications intended for the general public, in an international context.

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