The butterfly effect is one of the key theories in economics, but was originally developed as a meteorological theory by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1963. It was meant to refer to the possibility that a butterfly living in the rainforests of the Amazon River basin in South America could cause a terrible hurricane in the U.S. state of Texas two weeks later by simply flapping its wings a few times now and then.

What this theory is trying to tell us is that the final result of something's development has a very sensitive dependence on the initial conditions, and a very small deviation from the initial conditions will cause a great difference in the final result. A small deviation from the initial conditions will cause a big difference in the final result. An originally insignificant thing may eventually cause a big storm.

If the meteorological "butterfly effect" demonstrates the insignificance of human beings in front of nature's ingenious work, then the "butterfly effect" in economics often implies the inevitability of economic operation by chance.

In 2003, the United States found a suspected case of mad cow disease, which was originally an ordinary small matter, but flapped the wings of the butterfly, it is not even diagnosed "unlucky mad cow". The first impact, naturally, is the total output value of more than 170 billion U.S. dollars of the beef industry, and the accompanying nearly 1.5 million jobs. And as cattle necessary feed corn and soybeans were soon affected, futures prices plummeted. But ultimately the incident will be pushed to the abyss of losses also attributable to the United States consumers of beef products panic decline in confidence, in today's globalization, spreading panic not only on the U.S. domestic catering industry has dealt a fatal blow, and even spread to the world, at least more than a dozen countries have announced an emergency ban on all imports of U.S. beef. The incident is also said to have led to the collapse of Western restaurants in some parts of the country.

Looking at an example closer to our daily lives, at the end of 2012, China's edible oil market suddenly heard the sound of price increases, several major edible oil brands, such as Fulinmen, Dragon Fish, Luhua, etc. have raised its soybean oil, peanut oil and other edible oil sales prices. Edible oil prices rose because of the other side of the globe from the distant, to Brazil, Argentina as the representative of South America's soybean production areas suddenly announced that the next year is expected to reduce production, soybean production is expected to reduce the news directly led to the international futures market prices of soybean commodities began to continue to go up. Due to China's climatic conditions and water conditions are not suitable for large-scale planting of soybeans, peanuts and other legumes, so about 80% of China's soybeans, peanuts rely on imports, imported raw materials prices led directly to the production cost of edible oils significantly higher, the terminal price increases are justified. And because of the cooking oil properties, the price increase after the people's daily life will be affected to a certain extent.