More the study of human behavior under the environmental conditions of markets, or groups within firms. You can study animal behavior in the environment of a zoo, as opposed to say, a savannah or jungle.

If the market is a distributed algorithm, then money is a representation of some of its free variables.

Both are made up in the sense that the algorithm itself can be modified by regulation or social convention. There's even a field of economics dedicated to finding out how to engineer such an algorithm (a mechanism) to satisfy a given objective.

But if the algorithm is more or less stable, then it makes more sense to study it rather than just parts of its state. That's the difference.