In this book we have limited ourselves to the study of the probabilistic aspects of functioning markets in a sufficiently free market economy. More accurately, we study the details of supply and demand, as well as the mechanisms of the formation of prices and the establishment of equilibrium in the markets. Emphasis is given to the description of probabilistic nature of these fundamental market categories and notions. All these market concepts have been the subject of intensive investigations and critical rethinking in the book within the framework of the main paradigm of physical economics, which can be briefly formulated as follows.
All markets consist of people, buyers of some goods and sellers of other goods, simultaneously. Everything that the markets do, these people do, and it is precisely the action of all these people in the market that determine all results of the work of that market [1]. We have defined five fundamental or general principles of physical economics (and probabilistic economic theory naturally): the cooperation-oriented agent principle, the institutional and environmental principle, the dynamic and evolutionary principle, the market-based trade maximization principle, and, finally, the uncertainty and probability principle. These determine, in essence, the work of markets in our physical economic models. The cooperation-oriented agent principle speaks about the unique moving role of the market agents and significant role of social cooperation in modern market economy. The institutional and environmental principle expresses the fact that the interaction of agents with the various institutions and external environment must be taken into account simultaneously with the interaction of the agents with each other. The dynamic and evolutionary principle reflects the fact that the market behavior has, to certain extent, a deterministic character and consequently can be described with the aid of the equations of motion. The market-based trade maximization principle determines the direction of the motion of the free market as a whole under the influence of internal market forces. The uncertainty and probability principle tell us that all market phenomena are probabilistic in nature and thus help us to understand what a mathematical apparatus must do in order to adequately describe market behavior under uncertain conditions. We refer to the appropriate approach to as probabilistic economic theory, and since this theory is built by analogy with the “probabilistic physical theory” (quantum mechanics) of many-particle systems, we designated it more precisely as quantum economy [4]. Since the picture of the market economic world is built in physical economics at the micro level in approximately the same way as in physics, there is, in principle, a possibility of developing the quantitative methods of calculating the market economies by analogy with the calculation methods in physics. Consequently, it becomes possible to fruitfully use natural science concepts and speak natural science language to describe and analyze market structures and dynamics. In this book, we widely explore these great possibilities that help us to look at economic reality from the natural science points of view and discover new perspectives of economic theory for investigation and development.