Posted: 17 Dec 2011 12:16 AM PST

New paper:

Empirical confirmation of creative destruction from world trade data

We show that world trade network datasets contain empirical evidence that the dynamics of innovation in the world economy follows indeed the concept of creative destruction, as proposed by J.A. Schumpeter more than half a century ago. National economies can be viewed as complex, evolving systems, driven by a stream of appearance and disappearance of goods and services. Products appear in bursts of creative cascades. We find that products systematically tend to co-appear, and that product appearances lead to massive disappearance events of existing products in the following years. The opposite – disappearances followed by periods of appearances – is not observed. This is an empirical validation of the dominance of cascading competitive replacement events on the scale of national economies, i.e. creative destruction. We find a tendency that more complex products drive out less complex ones, i.e. progress has a direction. Finally we show that the growth trajectory of a country’s product output diversity can be understood by a recently proposed evolutionary model of Schumpeterian economic dynamics.

via [1112.2984v1] Empirical confirmation of creative destruction from world trade data.

Timbits vs RIMbits

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 01:15 PM PST

Tim Hortons donuts market capitalization just passed that of Research in Motion. Happy day for donut lovers. Not so much for Blackberry lovers. Timbits vs RIMbits.

Tim Hortons Market Cap Chart

Tim Hortons Market Cap Chart by YCharts

Twitter Digest: 2011-12-16

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 12:00 PM PST

Google Zeitgeist 2011: How the world searched – http://t.co/dtMFMeq9 #
How US steers oil suppliers away from democracy. Wait, I may have that backward. http://t.co/1ieY8Q3k /via @nouriel #
Happy New Year 1998 to S&P! RT @BloombergNews: France braces for cut in AAA debt rating – http://t.co/Esa8T17D #
Right. Lucky Canada! RT @HighlySalassee: @pkedrosky so supplying oil to the USA has increased Canada's democracy score? #
Dear Facades: Cease glittering. My read of journalism is that your problems always start there. Helpfully, P. #
JPM: Top 25 online retail sites represented 70% of total eCommerce sales in November, up from 67% share last year. #
Legal Language Explorer: Like Google Ngram meets US Supreme Court. Fascinating. http://t.co/39YDgWTk /by @computational #
Copyright as the new patents: LLE look at copyright vs patents in US Supreme Court – http://t.co/5x2US9cz #
Word of day: "Banker's dozen", where customer receives 11 of the product for the price of 12 – http://t.co/fwqIDihz /cc @ritholtz #
So, having seen, like, three hours of TV in 2011, I somehow saw one of GQ's best episodes of year: GoT S1E6 – http://t.co/ue0iveSG #
Great new SNL skit mocking Rick Perry's pious pandering on religion. Wonder who that guy is playing Perry. http://t.co/oNvP6wDa #
In RIM's Waterloo, the stakes 'have never been higher' – http://t.co/CSkiFUWR #
Reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's "Pulphead" – http://t.co/1ckQzetX #
Congrats to my friends at @liftopia for launching their ski conditions/deals app. Nice. Now, snow please. http://t.co/xo8txvoX #
Hugely amusing that Zynga just updated its IPO filing to say that its CEO Mark Pincus has been called "fearsome". http://t.co/vqw9byLF #
Comparing the pre/post "fearsome" Zynga IPO filings with track changes on. Just 'cause it amused me. http://t.co/wwuEBUK6 #
Apparently @runkeeper thinks my trail running is like punctuated teleportation. Or there are GPS issues. Either one. http://t.co/ZxdjMfer #
Shaking head at RIMM's results tonight. How can one company so consistently under-deliver on bad expectations. It isn't easy. #
I just mixed up Blofeld and Goldfinger. There goes my Bond baddie secret spy decoder ring and lapel button. #
Anyone know whether Zynga has IPO plans? Just heard of them and they sound hot, somethig to do with cellular phones. #
The sudden media we-knew-it-all-along-ishness about RIMM is annoying. No, you didn't. You only got smart when it was obvious. #
Timely call. RT @arrington: @pkedrosky by the way, i remember how much this pissed everyone off back in 2008. http://t.co/brW6dMGq #
Fun Bloomberg graph showing how RIMM analyst ratings have trailed after its share price all year. http://t.co/BQu089g5 #
I blow my nose at you, so-called "Arthur King": French central banker says UK should be downgraded first http://t.co/HaASpCXr #
Reality gets better and better: Pair of Robbers Want Only iPhones, No BlackBerries – http://t.co/stnSCLt0 #
Remarkable reading: A Minute By Minute Breakdown of MF Global's Last Week On Earth – http://t.co/3WhqR5iB #
The six stages of screwed products: Stage 1 – Stuff you can sell at a premium #
Stage 2: Stuff you can only sell at market prices #
Stage 3: Stuff you can only sell at a discount #
Stage 4: Stuff you have to give away #
Stage 5: Stuff you can't give away. #
Stage 6: Stuff people won't steal. #
Rick Perry tonight likely meant an overfly zone over Solyndra, not Syria. Easy mistake to make. #
November 2011 US precipitation anomaly map. Most of West's mountains running <50% of normal – http://t.co/P7Yz4xeJ #