@article{749183,
      author = {Hidalgo, César A.,},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/749183},
      title = {Why information grows : the evolution of order, from atoms  to economies /},
      abstract = {"Why do some nations prosper while others do not? While  economists often turn to measures like GDP or per-capita  income to answer this question, interdisciplinary theorist  Cesar Hidalgo argues that there is a better way to  understand economic success. Instead of measuring the money  a country makes, he proposes, we can learn more from  measuring a country's ability to make complex products--in  other words, the ability to turn an idea into an artifact  and imagination into capital. In Why Information Grows,  Hidalgo combines the seemingly disparate fields of economic  development and physics to present this new rubric for  economic growth. He argues that viewing development solely  in terms of money and politics is too simplistic to provide  a true understanding of national wealth. Rather, we should  be investigating what makes some countries more capable  than others. Complex products--from films to robots, apps  to automobiles--are a physical distillation of an economy's  knowledge, a measurable embodiment of the education,  infrastructure, and capability of an economy. Economic  wealth is about applying this knowledge to turn ideas into  tangible products, and the more complex these products, the  more economic growth a country will experience. Just look  at the East Asian countries, he argues, whose rapid rise  can be attributed to their ability to manufacture products  at all levels of complexity. A radical new interpretation  of global economics, Why Information Grows overturns  traditional assumptions about wealth and development. In a  world where knowledge is quite literally power, Hidalgo  shows how we can create societies that are limited by  nothing more than their imagination"--},
      recid = {749183},
      pages = {1 online resource (257 pages) :},
}