[Jolijn]

I'm interested in the study of complex issues like these (more from a math point of view than a political one) - how to optimize for the right choice, given that each choice has a bunch of non-overlapping side effects.

But I don't really know where to get started. What could I google for?

[tjradcliffe]

"Economics" :-)

Seriously, this is precisely the problem that economics tries to solve, and it is evolving into a mature discipline with a reasonable level of empirical validity, but the way psychology has evolved in the past few decades.

There are several main policy-oriented disciplines:

1) sociology, which studies society as if economics didn't matter

2) economics, which studies society as if morality didn't matter

3) political science, which studies society as if neither economics nor morality matters

I'm caricaturing, of course, but the differences between the fields are due more to historical accident than anything else, and if you're interested in focusing on the math then economics is the place to be.

There is a lot of very interesting work being done in "heterodox" economics right now, particularly by people like Steve Keen, who is focused on relaxing the assumption that the economy is at all times in quasi-equilibrium, which is foundational to the neo-classical paradigm: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/

Keen is interested in dynamical economic models, which necessarily require you include things like banks and money in the model (these drop out of equilibrium models, mostly.)