Power law behavior and world system evolution: A millennial learning process

Is social change on the scale of the human species a millennial learning process? The authors answer in the affirmative, demonstrating that world system evolution, viewed as a cascade of multilevel, nested, and self-similar, Darwinian-like processes ranging in “size” from one to over 250 generations, exhibits power law behavior, which is also known as self-organized criticality. World social organization, poised as it is on the boundary between order and chaos, is neither subcritical nor supercritical, and that allows for flexibility, which is a necessary condition of evolution and learning, and these in turn account for the major transitions marking world history and serving as the general framework for long-range forecasting. A literature review confirms the close affinity between evolution and learning, mathematical analysis reveals the crucial role of the learning rate as pacemaker of evolutionary change, and empirical evidence supports the concept of a cascade of evolutionary processes. The general equation describing world system emergence shows it to be a project whose current period is now 80% complete, suggesting that its major features might now be in place.     

我国中小商业企业集群的演化机制分析

中小商业企业“扎堆”是普遍存在的现象,集群是中小商业企业发展的战略选择,文章概括了中小商业企业集群的六大特征,分析了中小商业企业集群的生命周期,提出了我国中小商业企业集群的三种主要演化机制,即产业互动主导机制、自然演化主导机制和政府主导机制。     

Agile strategy adaptation in semiconductor wafer foundries: An example from Taiwan

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and examine how two Taiwanese firms–TSMC and UMC–who compete in the highly dynamic global semiconductor industry, are able to use their unique strategies to create a new wafer foundry sector. The birth of foundry business gave rise to the vertical disintegration of the IC industry. As the foundry industry evolved along its life cycle of embryonic, growth to shake-out stage, the focus of the foundry business migrated from manufacturing-centric to technology-centric and now to customer-centric. Various strategies were adopted at each stage by the incumbents to cope with the changes in the industry environment to sustain business growth.     

大城市居住区位演变浅议——以重庆为例

城市是人口聚居的地方。随着城市的发展和城市化进程的加快，城市，特别是大城市居民的择居行为和居住区位都在不断地发生变化。本文拟通过对重庆市居住区位变化的分析，对我国现阶段大城市居住区位的演变趋势和基本规律作初步探讨。     

品牌生态环境与品牌发展——达尔文生物进化思想对品牌发展演进的启示

在品牌生态环境变化日益激烈的今天,分析品牌生态环境对品牌发展的影响成为品牌理论研究领域的重点课题。达尔文生物进化思想对这一课题的研究具有极大的借鉴作用,品牌的发展过程与生物物种的发展与进化遵循着类似的基本规律。     

Population Genetics and Economic Growth

This paper builds an age-structured model of human population genetics in which explicit individual choices drive the dynamics via sexual selection. In the model, agents are endowed with a high-dimensional genome that determines their cognitive and physical characteristics. Young adults optimally search for a marriage partner, work for firms, consume goods, save for old age and, if married, decide how many children to have. In accord with the fundamental genetic operators, children receive genes from their parents. An agent's human capital (productivity) is an aggregate of the received genetic endowment and environmental influences so that the population of agents and the economy co-evolve. After calibrating the model, we examine the impact of physical, social, and economic institutions on population growth and economic performance. We find that institutional factors significantly impact economic performance by affecting marriage, family size, and the intergenerational transmission of genes. The principal novel findings are that i) genetic diversity has a nonmonotone causal impact on population size and economic performance; ii) an endogenous population threshold exists which, absent frictions, causes societies with declining populations and output to reverse course and grow; and iii) that the emotion love substantially accelerates economic growth by increasing genetic diversity just enough, which we term The Goldilocks Principle.     

跨国公司国际产业转移演变机制研究

跨国公司已经成为国际产业转移的组织者,关于跨国公司参与产业转移的动因和作用正日益受到关注,但对其参与国际产业转移的演变机制的探讨却很少涉及。研究跨国公司参与国际产业转移的演变机制,将有助于发展中国家更好地吸引和利用产业转移。     

On selecting a technology evolution path for broadband access networks

The rapid growth in the number of Internet users has accelerated the use of high-speed Internet access services, including broadband multimedia services. In the delivery of broadband multimedia services to end-users, it is necessary to build a high-speed backbone and access network. To construct a broadband access network, several alternative technologies including xDSL, CATV, and FTTx have been suggested and implemented in telecommunication networks. However, even if a technology is proven to be optimal for the current environment, it can be deteriorated by the elapse of time or the advent of new challenging technologies in the future. In this article, we concentrate on the selection of an evolution path for broadband access networks. We developed an optimization model for selecting the best technology and evolution path with the minimum total cost. The problem can be formulated as a mixed integer programming model. With a scenario for demands and cost factors, we find the optimal evolution path by solving our model with the CPLEX program and illustrate some sample paths for the broadband access network evolution plan. Once the cost and the demand are defined in detail to reflect the real-world case, our model can be useful to generate a practical technology evolution plan for broadband access networks in real-world applications.     

Cognitive Rules, Institutions, and Competition

Rules exert an important influence on rational individual behaviour. In economic analyses, two different types of rules occur that both induce rule-following behaviour. However, they are rarely distinguished. The differentiation of institutions (as interpersonal rules) and cognitive rules (as intrapersonal rules) allows for a clarification of substantial differences between the two types of rules, for example, concerning the incorporated knowledge and rule-persistence. Furthermore, the analysis of the interrelation of the two types of rules offers fruitful insights that still are not much explored in economics. The important dimensions to be considered are rule-harmony that stabilises institutional arrangements, and rule-conflict that induces pressure on persistent institutions. In this context, competition can be seen as a medium of interaction that allows individual agents to learn both about the behaviour of interacting agents and the nature and effects of the institutional framework. The integration of competition - as the core concept of economics - into the interplay of institutions and cognitive rules explores a missing point within the analysis of the economics of rules.     

Hayek Contra Pangloss: A Rejoinder

Whitman (1998) claims that Friedrich Hayek's theory of cultural evolution was not Panglossian. Denis's (2002) refutation relies on an overbroad definition of the term Panglossian, a misunderstanding of the implications of group selection theory, and an incomplete understanding of the nested character of evolutionary processes in Hayek's approach.