Preface to the special issue

The current volume is a special issue that includes papers contributed to the Applications of Physics in Financial Analysis (APFA7) & Tokyo Tech—Hitotsubashi Interdisciplinary Conference on the topic of “New Approaches to the Analysis of Large-Scale Business and Economic data”. APFA is a series of conferences held around the world. APFA1 was held on 1999 in Dublin, APFA2 in Liege on 2000, APFA3 in London on 2001, APFA4 in Warsaw on 2003, APFA5 in Torino on 2006, and APFA6 in Lisbon on 2007. APFA7 is the first meeting held outside Europe and was attended by 223 researchers in physics and economics from 23 countries world-wide. The conference was organized as a joint effort by Tokyo Institute of Technology and Hitotsubashi University. It was held in Tokyo on March of 2009. The event received support from the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI), Physical Society of Japan, the Japanese Economic Association, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, and Japan Association for Evolutionary Economics.