(Roughly) Daily

A scan of the history of gross world product (GWP) at multi-millennium time scale generates fundamental questions about the human past and prospect. What is the probability distribution for negative shocks ranging from mild recessions to the pandemics? Were the agricultural and industrial revolutions one-offs or did they manifest dynamics still ongoing? Is the pattern of growth best seen as exponential, if with occasional step changes in the rate, or as super exponential? If the latter, how do we interpret the typical corollary,that output will become infinite in finite time? In a modest step toward answering such ambitious questions, this paper introduces the first internally consistent statistical model of world economic history…

[Looking back to 10,000 BCE, the author concludes that] the world economic system over the long term tends not to the steady growth seen in industrial countries in the last century or so, but to instability. The credible range of future paths seems wide.

Oh, so very wide… David Roodman (@davidroodman) goes big: “Modeling the Human Trajectory” (pdf).

(Image above: source)

* François Meyer, 1974. La surchauffe de la croissance: Essai sur la dynamique de l’évolution

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As we take the long view, we might recall that it is on this date each year that the roughly 300 residents of a small village participate in a drawing that determines who will be sacrificed to insure a good harvest… in Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery.”

Originally published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it evoked strong initial negative response; subscriptions were cancelled; much hate mail received throughout the summer; and the Union of South Africa banned the story.  It is now considered a classic of short fiction (and among the most famous American short stories); it spawned several radio, television, and film adaptations, and inspired voluminous analysis, both literary and sociological.

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