Related papers: Statehood Without Capacity
State capacity may shape whether natural resources generate prosperity, as it determines if windfalls are effectively turned into useful projects or wasted. We test this hypothesis studying the 2004-2011 mining boom in Peru, where mines'…
Historically, rational choice theory has focused on the utility maximization principle to describe how individuals make choices. In reality, there is a computational cost related to exploring the universe of available choices and it is…
Public sector agencies perform the critical task of implementing the redistributive role of the State by acting as the leading provider of critical public services that many rely on. In recent years, public agencies have been increasingly…
We seek to deepen understanding of the micro-foundations of institutionalization while contributing to a sociological theory of markets by investigating the puzzle of price bubbles in financial markets. We find that such markets, despite…
We develop a theory of demand economics for an era of material abundance. The binding constraint on growth has shifted from insufficient aggregate demand to inadequate demand-tier upgrading. Our result is that, the new engine of growth lies…
Strategic models of legislative bargaining predict that proposers can extract high shares of economic surplus by identifying and exploiting weak coalition partners. However, strength and weakness can be difficult to assess even with…
In the current environment of financial distress, many governments are likely to soon become major holders of financial assets, but the policy debate focuses only on the likelihood and extent of short-term market stabilization. This paper…
In response to failures of central planning, the Chinese government has experimented not only with free-market trade zones, but with allowing non-profit foundations to operate in a decentralized fashion. A network study shows how these…
Why are human societies unstable? Theories based on the observation of recurring patterns in historical data indicate that economic inequality, as well as social factors are key drivers. So far, models of this phenomenon are more…
All economies require physical resource consumption to grow and maintain their structure. The modern economy is additionally characterized by private debt. The Human and Resources with MONEY (HARMONEY) economic growth model links these…
The superposition principle lies at the heart of many non-classical properties of quantum mechanics. Motivated by this, we introduce a rigorous resource theory framework for the quantification of superposition of a finite number of linear…
Self-organization is a process where order of a whole system arises out of local interactions between small components of a system. Emergy, spelled with an 'm', defined as the amount of (solar) energy used to make a product or service, is…
We derive the most probable distribution of resources for a simple society. We find that a probabilistic analysis forbids both too much and too less equity, and selects instead a minimally ordered state. We give the detailed calculations…
This work investigates a modified Schelling model within the scope and aims of Social Physics. The main purpose is to see if how the concepts of potential and kinetic energy can be represented within a computational sociological system. A…
The squeezed states are states of minimum uncertainty, but unlike the coherent states, in which the uncertainty in the position and the momentum are the same, these allow to reduce the uncertainty, either in the position or in the momentum,…
Many recent models of trade dynamics use the simple idea of wealth exchanges among economic agents in order to obtain a stable or equilibrium distribution of wealth among the agents. In particular, a plain analogy compares the wealth in a…
I characterize optimal government policy in a sticky-price economy with different types of consumers and endogenous financial constraints in the banking and entrepreneurial sectors. The competitive equilibrium allocation is constrained…
Historical narratives are dominated by actions of powerful individuals as well as competitions for power. Characterizing the origins, types and competitive strength of different kinds of power may yield a scaffolding for understanding…
Self-organisation lies at the core of fundamental but still unresolved scientific questions, and holds the promise of de-centralised paradigms crucial for future technological developments. While self-organising processes have been…
This thesis seeks to develop a general method for solving so-called quantum realizability problems, which are questions of the following form: under which conditions does there exist a quantum state exhibiting a given collection of…