Innovation flow through social networks: Productivity distribution

A detailed empirical analysis of the productivity of non financial firms across several countries and years shows that productivity follows a non-Gaussian distribution with power law tails. We demonstrate that these empirical findings can be interpreted as consequence of a mechanism of exchanges in a social network where firms improve their productivity by direct innovation or/and by imitation of other firm's technological and organizational solutions. The type of network-connectivity determines how fast and how efficiently information can diffuse and how quickly innovation will permeate or behaviors will be imitated. From a model for innovation flow through a complex network we obtain that the expectation values of the productivity level are proportional to the connectivity of the network of links between firms. The comparison with the empirical distributions reveals that such a network must be of a scale-free type with a power-law degree distribution in the large connectivity range.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Agri-Food Globalisation and Rural Transformation in Chile: Smallholder Livelihoods in the Global Value Chain for Raspberries

As transnational capital continues to penetrate the agricultural sectors of developing countries, agri-food production-consumption is increasingly organised at the global scale. This has profound implications for small-scale farmers in the global South, who are being integrated into a globalising agri-food system geared towards the provision of agricultural commodities to meet the demands of wealthy consumers in Northern markets. Chile is one country that has purposefully inserted itself into the world trading system as an agri-exporter - a strategy that has fundamentally transformed Chilean agriculture. Framed within an examination of agrarian transformations in Chile and a world-historical account of agri-food globalisation, this thesis critically examines local-global linkages engendered by agri-food globalisation through a case study of export-oriented Chilean smallholder raspberry growers. The study aims to understand the structure and dynamics of the global value chain for raspberries, and to determine the livelihood implications of smallholder growers' participation in it. A detailed, locality case study was conducted in Yerbas Buenas - an important site of raspberry production within Chile - combining analysis of the raspberry value chain, and an in-depth survey of grower livelihoods. The value chain component focuses on key chain actors and functions within Chile, examining the role of public and private sector organisations governing and coordinating activities along the chain. The livelihoods component examines the significance of raspberry production within diversified household livelihood strategies, considering key assets, capabilities and mediating factors shaping smallholders' access to the value chain. Additionally, the research seeks to explore synergies and tensions between global value chain and sustainable rural livelihoods approaches, and to consider their integrative potential. The thesis finds that increasing competitive pressures, particularly arising from the evolving quality requirements of key overseas buyers, are seriously undermining the capacity of smallholder growers to participate in the chain. While existing private and public sector support is necessary for the participation of the smallest growers, it is not sufficient to secure their survival. It is argued that the neoliberal macroeconomic model represents a major barrier to smallholder participation, as the modernising agri-export-led growth strategy that it underpins can not accommodate the degree of intervention or the redistribution of resources required to address socio-economic inequality in the Chilean countryside

Overthrowing the dictator: a game-theoretic approach to revolutions and media

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In this paper, we study its role in mobilization. We assume that social media allow potential participants to observe the individual participation decisions of others, while traditional mass media allow potential participants to see only the total number of people who participated before them. We show that when individuals’ willingness to revolt is publicly known, then both sorts of media foster a successful revolution. However, when willingness to revolt is private information, only social media ensure that a revolt succeeds, with mass media multiple outcomes are possible, one of which has individuals not participating in the revolt. This suggests that social media enhance the likelihood that a revolution triumphs more than traditional mass media

Spreading order: religion, cooperative niche construction, and risky coordination problems

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction

Interlocking directorates as a thrust substitute: The case of the Italian non-life insurance industry

This paper investigates the market structure of the insurance business by analyzing the (interlock) linkages among companies created by their directors. We focus on the non-life business since this is a sector relatively closed with respect to the competition with other financial activities; an absence of industry competition cannot thus be compensated by other agents. We apply the graph theory to describe the network and the principal component analysis to summarize information and verify the correlation between direct interlocking and companies’ market shares