William Brian Arthur (born 31 July 1945) is an
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...
credited with developing the modern approach to
increasing returns
In economics, diminishing returns are the decrease in marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, holding all other factors of production equal (ceteris paribu ...
. He has lived and worked in Northern California for many years. He is an authority on economics in relation to
complexity theory,
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...
and
financial markets
A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial ma ...
. He has been on the external faculty at the
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inclu ...
, and a Visiting Researcher at the Intelligent Systems Lab at
PARC. He is credited with the invention of the
El Farol Bar problem
The El Farol bar problem is a problem in game theory. Every Thursday night, a fixed population want to go have fun at the El Farol Bar, unless it's too crowded.
* If less than 60% of the population go to the bar, they'll all have more fun than if ...
.
Biography
W. Brian Arthur was born in 1945 in
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...
, Northern Ireland. He received his BSc in Electrical Engineering at
Queen's University Belfast (1966), an M. A. in Operational Research (1967), at
Lancaster University, Lancaster, England, and an M. A. in Mathematics at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
(1969). Arthur received his PhD in
Operations Research
Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...
(1973) and an M. A. in Economics (1973) from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
.
At age 37, Dr. Arthur was the youngest endowed chair holder at Stanford University.
[''Complexity'', M. Mitchell Waldrop, first published 1992.]
Arthur is the former Morrison Professor of Economics and Population Studies; Professor of Human Biology,
Stanford University, 1983–1996. He is the co-founder of the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies at Stanford.
Arthur is one of the distinguished External Research Faculty members at the
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inclu ...
,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Arthur's long association with the Institute started in 1987 with the introduction and support of Stanford economist and winner of the
Nobel Prize in Economics
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
,
Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972.
In economics ...
, and
Philip Warren Anderson
Philip Warren Anderson (December 13, 1923 – March 29, 2020) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. Anderson made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking (including a paper in 1 ...
, winner of the
Nobel Prize in Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
. Arthur was named as the first director of the interdisciplinary Economics Program at the Institute beginning in 1988. He was named the Citibank Professor at the institute in 1994, with the endowment of
Citibank and then-Citibank CEO
John S. Reed.
He served several terms on the Science Board 1988–2006, and Board of Trustees, 1994–2004, during his association with the institute.
Arthur was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987.
Arthur was also awarded the
Schumpeter Prize in economics in 1990, and the (inaugural)
Lagrange Prize for complexity science in 2008.
Arthur was awarded an honorary Doctor of Economic Sciences degree from the
National University of Ireland (2000), and an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree (Honoris Causa) from
Lancaster University on 9 December 2009.
Arthur and several other Santa Fe Institute researchers are profiled extensively in the book ''Complexity'' by M. Mitchell Waldrop.
[
He is a Fellow of the ]Econometric Society
The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...
.
Work
Arthur is noted for his seminal works "studying the impacts of positive feedback
Positive feedback (exacerbating feedback, self-reinforcing feedback) is a process that occurs in a feedback loop which exacerbates the effects of a small disturbance. That is, the effects of a perturbation on a system include an increase in th ...
or increasing returns
In economics, diminishing returns are the decrease in marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, holding all other factors of production equal (ceteris paribu ...
in economies, and how these increasing returns magnify small, random occurrences in the market place." These principles are especially significant in technology-specific industries where network effects commonly occur.( EL1)
Complexity theory
Arthur is one of the early economic researchers in the emerging complexity field. Specifically, his complexity studies focused on the "economics of high technology; how business evolves in an era of high technology; cognition in the economy; and financial markets."
Arthur's comments on the evolution of complexity theory as a different way of seeing and conducting scientific inquiry:
Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking.
The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hits some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty.
How Technology Evolves
Arthur's book, ''The Nature of Technology: What it Is and How it Evolves,'' explores his belief that technology undergoes its own evolution, similar to Darwin's theory of evolution in Biology. Arthur's claim is that technology evolves out of earlier existing forms. He goes on to say that economies are not merely a container for these innovations, but rather economies arise as a result of new technological developments.
See also
* Social software (social procedure)
* Inductive reasoning
Publications
W. Brian Arthur has published several books, papers, articles and more.[For a further selection of papers, articles, lectures and papers, se]
Some Selected Papers
/ref> A selection:
* 1994.
Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy
'. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
* 1997. ''The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II'', edited with Steven Durlauf and David Lane, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, Series in the Sciences of Complexity.
* 2009. ''The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it Evolves''. The Free Press and Penguin Books.
* 2021,
Foundations of Complexity Economics
, overview article in ''Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
''.
References
External links
W. Brian Arthur, External Research Faculty, Santa Fe Institute
*, Dr. Arthur's remarks plus mind-mapped notes.
Further reading
The book ''Complexity'', by M. Mitchell Waldrop, contains a biographical profile of W. Brian Arthur, and a description of Arthur's work at Stanford and at the Santa Fe Institute.
''Source: The Inner Path to Knowledge Creation'', by Joseph Jaworski, contains the story of the U-Process and W. Brian Arthur's contribution to its discovery, based on "Coming From Your Inner Self", reference above.
External links
An Interview with W. Brian Arthur
by Joel Kurtzman / April 1, 1998 / Second Quarter 1998 / Issue 11 (originally published by Booz & Company)
Textise
Original link
URL)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arthur, W. Brian
1945 births
Complex systems scientists
University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni
UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni
20th-century Irish economists
Stanford University faculty
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Operations researchers
Living people
Alumni of Lancaster University
Alumni of Queen's University Belfast
Santa Fe Institute people