An understanding of the behaviour of financial assets and the evolution of economies has never been as important as today. This book looks at these complex systems from the perspective of the physicist. So called 'econophysics' and its application to finance has made great strides in recent years. Less emphasis has been placed on the broader subject of macroeconomics and many economics students are still taught traditional neo-classical economics. The reader is given a general primer in statistical physics, probability theory, and use of correlation functions. Much of the mathematics that is d