6,208 research outputs found
Schumpeterian economic dynamics as a quantifiable minimum model of evolution
We propose a simple quantitative model of Schumpeterian economic dynamics.
New goods and services are endogenously produced through combinations of
existing goods. As soon as new goods enter the market they may compete against
already existing goods, in other words new products can have destructive
effects on existing goods. As a result of this competition mechanism existing
goods may be driven out from the market - often causing cascades of secondary
defects (Schumpeterian gales of destruction). The model leads to a generic
dynamics characterized by phases of relative economic stability followed by
phases of massive restructuring of markets - which could be interpreted as
Schumpeterian business `cycles'. Model timeseries of product diversity and
productivity reproduce several stylized facts of economics timeseries on long
timescales such as GDP or business failures, including non-Gaussian fat tailed
distributions, volatility clustering etc. The model is phrased in an open,
non-equilibrium setup which can be understood as a self organized critical
system. Its diversity dynamics can be understood by the time-varying topology
of the active production networks.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure
The phase transition in random catalytic sets
The notion of (auto) catalytic networks has become a cornerstone in
understanding the possibility of a sudden dramatic increase of diversity in
biological evolution as well as in the evolution of social and economical
systems. Here we study catalytic random networks with respect to the final
outcome diversity of products. We show that an analytical treatment of this
longstanding problem is possible by mapping the problem onto a set of
non-linear recurrence equations. The solution of these equations show a crucial
dependence of the final number of products on the initial number of products
and the density of catalytic production rules. For a fixed density of rules we
can demonstrate the existence of a phase transition from a practically
unpopulated regime to a fully populated and diverse one. The order parameter is
the number of final products. We are able to further understand the origin of
this phase transition as a crossover from one set of solutions from a quadratic
equation to the other.Comment: 7 pages, ugly eps files due to arxiv restriction
What makes for prize-winning television?
We investigate the determinants of success in four international television awards festivals between 1994 and 2012. We find that countries with larger markets and greater expenditure on public broadcasting tend to win more awards, but that the degree of concentration in the market for television and rates of penetration of pay-per-view television are unrelated to success. These findings are consistent with general industrial organisation literature on quality and market size, and with media policy literature on public service broadcasting acting as a force for quality. However, we also find that âhome countriesâ enjoy a strong advantage in these festivals, which is not consistent with festival success acting as a pure proxy for television quality
Citizen Entrepreneurship: A Conceptual Picture of the Inclusion, Integration and Engagement of Citizens in the Entrepreneurial Process
This conceptual and exploratory article aims to present a rationale for the engagement of citizens with the process and practice of, and research on new civic forms of entrepreneurship. We argue that this form of citizen engagement could enable a better alignment of entrepreneurial initiatives with economic, social and community priorities, and to address issues of global significance of local interest in uncertain environments. To this end, we posit that engaging citizens in the entrepreneurial process could facilitate agency at the collective level of people with their rights, duties and responsibilities, to identify, participate in and govern with existing institutions, in meaningful economic and social activity in defined spatial environments. Our normative understanding of entrepreneurial process involves the creation of business, social and public enterprises, the formation of which is led by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are of course citizens of specific nation states, but their endeavours do not necessarily warrant the participation of the wider community of citizens in the entrepreneurial process beyond their receiving function as users of goods and services. We consider whether pro-active engagement in a variety of ways, as nurtured in the practice of Citizen Science or Citizen Economics projects, could strengthen the profile and substance of entrepreneurship to resolve critical economic, social and environmental concerns of our times. We use the concept of the âcommonsâ and collective efficacy to argue for an understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation as a social good. We argue that Citizen Entrepreneurship (CE) is able to create new forms of collective organisation and governance, and derive economic and social value by addressing local issues arising from wide-spread phenomena such as climate change, ecological and environmental challenges, inequality, social polarisation, populism, migration and the gradual erosion of democratic institutions. To do so, citizens need to develop capabilities for engagement in the entrepreneurship process, especially when traditional public and market institutions fail to satisfy their existential needs. Indeed, active engagement could lead to the achievement of capabilities for well-being and fulfilling lives which go beyond the acquisition of skills and competencies necessary to pursue a vocation or a career. We refer to and interpret three examples of collective entrepreneurial activity in different urban environments in European countries as models of CE highlighting what we see as a growing trend in the entrepreneurial substance of the âurban commonsâ. We work towards the creation of a conceptual model with which to develop an understanding of a unique formulation of entrepreneurship
Response Functions to Critical Shocks in Social Sciences: An Empirical and Numerical Study
We show that, provided one focuses on properly selected episodes, one can
apply to the social sciences the same observational strategy that has proved
successful in natural sciences such as astrophysics or geodynamics. For
instance, in order to probe the cohesion of a policy, one can, in different
countries, study the reactions to some huge and sudden exogenous shocks, which
we call Dirac shocks. This approach naturally leads to the notion of structural
(as opposed or complementary to temporal) forecast. Although structural
predictions are by far the most common way to test theories in the natural
sciences, they have been much less used in the social sciences. The Dirac shock
approach opens the way to testing structural predictions in the social
sciences. The examples reported here suggest that critical events are able to
reveal pre-existing ``cracks'' because they probe the social cohesion which is
an indicator and predictor of future evolution of the system, and in some cases
foreshadows a bifurcation. We complement our empirical work with numerical
simulations of the response function (``damage spreading'') to Dirac shocks in
the Sznajd model of consensus build-up. We quantify the slow relaxation of the
difference between perturbed and unperturbed systems, the conditions under
which the consensus is modified by the shock and the large variability from one
realization to another
Creating the future together: Toward a framework for research synthesis in entrepreneurship
To develop a body of evidence-based knowledge on entrepreneurship, findings and contributions from the positivist, narrative and design research traditions in this area need to be combined. Therefore, a framework for research synthesis in terms of social mechanisms, contextual conditions and outcome patterns is developed in this paper. Subsequently, a synthesis of the existing body of research findings on entrepreneurial opportunities serves to illustrate how this framework can be applied and provides results that inform entrepreneurial action. Finally, we discuss how this synthetic approach serves to systematically connect the fragmented landscape of entrepreneurship research, and thus gradually build a cumulative and evidence-based body of knowledge on entrepreneurship
Bailouts in a common market: a strategic approach
Governments in the EU grant Rescue and Restructure Subsidies to bail out ailing firms. In an international asymmetric Cournot duopoly we study effects of such subsidies on market structure and welfare. We adopt a common market setting, where consumers from the two countries form one market. We show that the subsidy is positive also when it fails to prevent the exit. The reason is a strategic effect, which forces the more efficient firm to make additional cost-reducing effort. When the exit is prevented, allocative and productive efficiencies are lower and the only gaining player is the rescued firm
Innovation and the creative destruction of trade :Â a study of the intensive and extensive margins of trade for French firms
Our study of French exporters examines the causal relationship between innovation and extensive and intensive margins of trade using a propensity score matching and differenceâinâdifferences approach. Results show innovation has a positive impact on total exports driven primarily through the intensive margin. To understand the absence of an extensive margin effect, we show new and terminated productâcountry transactions increase at similar rates in the year of innovation for the treated and control groups but net trade creation for innovators outstrips that of nonâinnovators in the following two years implying firms need to innovate in order to survive in export markets
Democratic cultural policy : democratic forms and policy consequences
The forms that are adopted to give practical meaning to democracy are assessed to identify what their implications are for the production of public policies in general and cultural policies in particular. A comparison of direct, representative, democratic elitist and deliberative versions of democracy identifies clear differences between them in terms of policy form and democratic practice. Further elaboration of these differences and their consequences are identified as areas for further research
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