Universal Features in the Growth Dynamics of Complex Organizations

1998/04/08 by Youngki Lee, Luı́s A. Nunes Amaral, Luis A. N. Amaral +3 · 5 citations
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Economic theories and models #Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-fin.GN

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.81.3275

4 pages, 7 ps figures, using Latex2e with epsf rotate and multicol style files. Submitted to PRL

arxiv created 1998/04/08 · openalex publication_date 1998/10/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We analyze the fluctuations in the gross domestic product (GDP) of 152 countries for the period 1950--1992. We find that (i) the distribution of annual growth rates for countries of a given GDP decays with ``fatter'' tails than for a Gaussian, and (ii) the width of the distribution scales as a power law of GDP with a scaling exponent \ensuremathβ\ensuremath≈0.15. Both findings are in surprising agreement with results on firm growth. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the evolution of organizations with complex structure is governed by similar growth mechanisms.

Citations

• Multiple regimes and cross‐country growth behaviour
• The Fractal Geometry of Nature
• Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction, and Employment Reallocation
• A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth

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