Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

by Cesar A. Hidalgo

people who got their jobs through personal contacts had better-paying jobs than those who got them through direct applications or professional recruiting agencies.

This redundancy is important for the studies on job searches described above, since they tell us that social networks will tend to bring into a firm people who are similar to the ones already there. This similarity is both positive and negative, since it can more easily introduce someone who would be a good social and professional fit with other members of the firm, but it can also increase the redundancy of the knowledge accumulated in the firm to unhealthy levels, or it can represent an implicit form of discrimination

the trust that enables the emergence of these large networks does not determine whether these networks accumulate knowledge on auto manufacturing or jet engine production. In other words, the mechanisms that give rise to the network and those that are responsible for the network’s contents are different.

By making links cheaper, trust enables the formation of larger networks that can accumulate more personbytes of knowledge.

low-trust familial societies are more likely than high-trust societies to expect the state to catalyze the formation of the large economic networks they lack.

The more prosperous countries are those that are better at making information grow.

Free energy is a technical concept defined as the energy of a system that can be used to produce work. It excludes thermal energy.

The traditional definition of technology used in economics would imply that a reduction of salaries that does not affect the output produced could be interpreted as an increase in technology, since it involves the same amount of output with less input (an increase in total factor productivity).

if you want economists to consider your point of view, you need to give the surname “capital” to whatever aspect of the world you are looking to incorporate into the economic discussion!