Human Wealth Evolution is An Accelerating Expansion Underpinned by a Decelerating Optimization Process

Abstract

Eight centuries of yearly GDP data from three regions of Western Europe, corresponding to present days UK, France and Sweden, gauge economic interactions that reflect the societal structures in which they unfold. In short, they provide an insight on human wealth evolution. Our data analysis is carried out in two steps. First, a Monte Carlo algorithm is used to fit the GDP time series to a piecewise continuous function comprising a sequence of exponentials with different exponents. These arguably correspond to different social and technological stages of societal organization. As a function of time, human wealth evolution features an accelerating trend and is thus an evolutionary expansion process. The intensity of human interactions driving the evolutionary process has increased manyfold over the centuries. This motivates our second analysis, where `wall clock time' as independent variable is replaced with a measure of human interactions intensity $\tau$. In terms of this interaction variable $\tau$, human wealth evolution displays two different logarithmic regimes, both decelerating, and connected by a rapid cross-over. The latter occurs around the outbreak of World War I and coincides with the transition in Western Europe from a mainly agricultural to a mainly industrial and urbanized society. Finally, wealth evolution in terms of $\tau$ shows the hallmarks of record dynamics optimization.