There’s a third reason why complexity economics is under-rated. It does not give us a means of foreseeing the future. Of course, conventional economics doesn’t do so either. But the difference is that complexity theory tells us that such forecasts might well be impossible – which is not what the customer wants to hear. The best it can do is help us understand what has happened. And for me, this is good enough. As someone once said, “Economists have only changed the world; the point, however, is to understand it.”
I literally spent 3 years of my life reading every book and every academic paper on complexity (totaling more than 200 sources last I counted, and yes, humblebrag). For my money, Butterfly Economics is a great primer to viewing economics through the lens of complex systems.