This tutorial from Victor MacGill, http://complexity.orconhosting.net.nz/intro.html, puts a swarm of birds as an example of chaos theory. Something simple like follow the other bird becomes a new phenomenon like a flock.

A city is an example of complexity. One person joins another and complex systems emerge. The shape of the final outcome is not predictable.

The economy is certainly non-linear. Most things are but in psycholgy we ‘force’ our data into a linear model.

I imagine some economic phenomena are like flocks or swarms – accountable with a few simple parameters. Happines (google Marcial Losada) could be like that. Complexity means unpredictable outcomes. Some people feel that means ‘uncontrollable’. For me that means generative – having many possible futures just as a swarm has many possible futures. What that means is that like birds in a flock we need to adjust our position to the other birds as we go. The bird that is a menace, or that will get itself into trouble, is the one that wants to fly south and flies south regardles of what the other birds in the flock are doing!