Emergence of autocatalytic sets in a simple model of technological evolution

Wim Hordijk (), Stuart Kauffman () and Roger Koppl ()
Additional contact information
Wim Hordijk: SmartAnalytiX
Stuart Kauffman: Institute for Systems Biology
Roger Koppl: Syracuse University

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2023, vol. 33, issue 5, No 5, 1519-1535

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: TAP; RAF; Adjacent possible; Combinatorial innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C63 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00191-023-00838-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joevec:v:33:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1007_s00191-023-00838-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/191/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00191-023-00838-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Evolutionary Economics is currently edited by Uwe Cantner, Elias Dinopoulos, Horst Hanusch and Luigi Orsenigo

More articles in Journal of Evolutionary Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().