Disruptive times call for transformational leaders with a knack for addressing complex problems. To navigate effectively, we must learn to let go—and become more complex ourselves.

Source: www.mckinsey.com

Like many emerging economies, the productive structure of the Paraguayan economy is not complex. It relies extensively on low value-added activities in the primary sector such as agriculture and cattle ranching. These activities have a lower return in terms of economic and social benefits than other potential productive activities and do not contribute to increasing capability accumulation. In this paper we present a tool to support the identification of strategic sectors and products which if taken advantage of, could leverage development through the accumulation of productive capabilities. Our guiding question is: Which productive sectors should be promoted to foster economic development in Paraguay through a transition towards a more complex economy? To answer this question, we use concepts from the Economic Complexity theory to identify new products and cluster them based on the Product Space methodology for the determination of potential products and combine it with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for multicriteria analysis considering multiple criteria. In doing so, our proposed methodology contributes to both the Economic Complexity and the AHP literature. Through this combination, we tackle the multiplicity of juxtaposed criteria, which should be considered at the prioritization stage in the crafting of economic restructuring measures according to the country’s capabilities. Our evaluation showed that the combination of the approaches is useful, and for Paraguay’s case, it helped identify sectors, which, if promoted by policymakers, could help boost economic development through complexity and capability accumulation.

 

Multi-criteria analysis of economic complexity transition in emerging economies: The case of Paraguay
Arturo González, Eduardo Ortigoza, Cecilia Llamosas, GerardoBlanco, Raúl Amarilla

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences

Source: www.sciencedirect.com

Even with no one in charge, army ants work collectively to build bridges out of their bodies. New research reveals the simple rules that lead to such complex group behavior.

Source: www.quantamagazine.org

In the past weeks, I have received several requests to address the merits of the Anna D. Broido and Aaron Clauset (BC) preprint [1] and their fruitless search for scale-free networks in nature. The preprint’s central claim is deceptively simple: It starts from the textbook definition of a scale-free network as a network with a power law in the degree distribution [2]. It then proceeds to fit a power law to 927 networks, finding that only 4% are scale-free. The author’s conclusion that ‘scale-free networks are rare,’ is turned into the title of the preprint, helping it to get maximal attention. It worked—Quanta magazine accepted its conclusions without reservations. AfterThe Atlantic carried the article, the un-refereed preprint received a degree of media exposure that the original discovery of scale-free networks never enjoyed.

While I saw the conceptual problems with the manuscript, I was convinced that the paper must be technically proficient. Yet, once I did dig into it, it was a real ride. If you have the patience to get to the end of this commentary, you will see where it fails at the conceptual level. But, we will learn that it also fails, repeatedly, at the technical level.

 

Love is All You Need
Clauset’s fruitless search for scale-free networks

Albert-László Barabási

Source: www.barabasilab.com