Economic Growth, Koestler Cycles and the lock chamber effect

This paper develops a suggestion contained in a 1940 novel by A. Koestler. A dynamic model is built to analyze the relationship among economic growth, complexity, "maturity" of the population, and propensity to contribute to the stock of a public good. Economic growth is represented as a process that exogenously generates technical innovations: these increase the division of labor and make the social structure increasingly complex. Information about the new structure can only be gathered at a cost, so that in general, knowledge of the "true" structure lags behind the changes of the structure itself. Economic growth then causes cycles in the individuals' perception of their best interests. Accessibility to information influences the length and the amplitude of such cycles. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.