Emergence of Autocatalytic Sets in a Simple Model of Technological Evolution

TL;DR

This paper combines models of technological evolution and autocatalytic networks to demonstrate that economic production networks naturally tend to form autocatalytic sets, supporting the view of the economy as an autocatalytic system.

Contribution

It integrates the TAP model of combinatorial innovation with RAF autocatalytic sets, showing their compatibility and prevalence in economic networks.

Findings

High probability of autocatalytic sets in production networks

Distribution and robustness of economic autocatalytic sets analyzed

Results support the economy as an autocatalytic system

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 production functions 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 production function 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.