Economies are computers embodied in social networks and our world is made of bits. To understand differences in income we need to understand differences in the capacities of economies to compute. Rich and sophisticated economies, like that of Japan, Korea, or Sweden, are sophisticated computers with an enormous ability to transform imagination into reality. Less sophisticated economies, like those of many Sub-Saharan and Latin American countries, are computers that struggle to achieve the processing power needed to make complex things, and hence, struggle to make their economies grow.
In Why Information Grows I show that thinking of economies as computers provides fertile improvements to our theoretical understanding of economies and to the tools we use to anticipate the evolution of economic systems.
