Emergence of autocatalytic sets in a simple model of technological evolution

Journal of Evolutionary Economics - Tập 33 - Trang 1519-1535 - 2023
Wim Hordijk1, Stuart Kauffman2, Roger Koppl3
1SmartAnalytiX, Vienna, Austria
2Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA
3Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA

Tóm tắt

Two alternative views of an economy are combined and studied. The first view is that of technological evolution as a process of combinatorial innovation. Recently a simple mathematical model (TAP) was introduced to study such a combinatorial process. The second view is that of a network of product transformations forming an autocatalytic set. Autocatalytic (RAF) sets have been studied extensively in the context of chemical reaction networks. Here, we combine the two models (TAP and RAF) and show that they are compatible. In particular, it is shown that product transformation networks resulting from the combinatorial TAP model have a high probability of containing autocatalytic (RAF) sets. We also study the size distribution and robustness of such “economic autocatalytic sets”, and compare our results with those from the chemical context. These initial results strongly support earlier claims that the economy can indeed be seen as an autocatalytic set, and reconcile seemingly opposing views of evolution vs. mutualism in economics.

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Thông tin xuất bản

Journal of Evolutionary Economics

Tập 33

1519-1535

Thông tin tác giả