The New Mathematical Escalade: The recent Impact of the dynamical System Theory on the economic Analysis

This paper aims at showing how the use of the dynamical systems theory (dst) has affected the thematic content of economic analysis, either by fostering new theoretical developments or by making translation from economics to mathematics more complete. To this end, we elaborate a classification on the 4 344 papers published in the four leading economic journals between 1990 and 2004, and present two dynamical interpretations of the Malthusian model. The main conclusions state that: 1) the application of dst to economics has made the meaning of dynamic equilibriums more complex in sixteen subdisciplines, mostly in those traditionally characterized by static analysis; 2) the accurate use of dst techniques allows finding equilibriums which have been disregarded by mainstream theories.