  Physical analogs have shown considerable promise for understanding the
behavior of complex adaptive systems, including macroeconomics, biological
systems, social networks, and electric power markets. Many of today's most
challenging technical and policy questions can be reduced to a distributed
economic control problem. Indeed, economically-based control of large-scale
systems is founded on the conjecture that the price-based regulation (e.g.,
auctions, markets) results in an optimal allocation of resources and emergent
optimal system control. This paper explores the state of the art in the use
physical analogs for understanding the behavior of some econophysical systems
and deriving stable and robust control strategies for them. In particular we
review and discuss applications of some analytic methods based on a
thermodynamic metaphor according to which the interplay between system entropy
and conservation laws gives rise to intuitive and governing global properties
of complex systems that cannot be otherwise understood.
