Von Neumann's Legacy: 'Intelligent' Capital in a Weightless Economy

Alessandro Acquisti

Economics Technical Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: We analyze the production factor which is behind the phenomenon of the de-materialization of advanced economies: synergic combinations of electronic hardware and software, which are capable of manipulating symbols autonomously and modifying themselves - forms of 'intelligent' capital because they incorporate human capital in physical forms. This capital is heterogeneous from traditional capital. We analyze the origin of that heterogeneity and show that intelligent capital is potentially capable of increasing without direct investment. Its characteristics derive from developments in computing and automata theory which benefited from John von Neumann's research.

JEL-codes: B31 O30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gth, nep-ifn and nep-tid
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tcd:tcduet:9818

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