External Professor, Santa Fe Institute
and Visiting Researcher, SRI International
W. Brian Arthur is an economist and complexity scientist. In the late 1980s he led the Santa Fe Institute group that developed complexity economics, viewing the economy as an evolving system whose participants continually adapt to the changing economy they collectively create. Earlier, his research on increasing returns and path dependence showed how small historical events can shape markets and industries, allowing one or a few technologies or firms to become dominant. In the 1990s and 2000s he developed a broad theory of how technologies emerge and evolve through combination and continual refinement.
Arthur has been Morrison Professor of Economics and Population Studies at Stanford University and has served the Santa Fe Institute as Director of its Economics Program, External Professor, member of its Board of Trustees, and member of its Founders' Society. In 2008 he received the Lagrange Prize in Complexity Science. His recent work explores how new technologies—particularly artificial intelligence—continually restructure the economy.
Research
Brian Arthur is known for several sets of ideas:
Complexity economics. In the late 1980s and early 90s Arthur led the Santa Fe Institute group that developed complexity economics, a new approach to economics. Rather than treating the economy as a system in equilibrium, complexity economics asks how patterns and structures continually form and reform as participants adapt to the outcomes they together create.
Increasing returns. In the 1980s Arthur showed how increasing returns, or positive feedbacks, can magnify small historical events and allow one or a few technologies or firms to become dominant, especially where network effects are important. These ideas have become fundamental to our understanding of technology industries and the digital economy.
How technology evolves. In The Nature of Technology (2009), Arthur presents a general theory of how technologies emerge and evolve. New technologies arise by combining and refining existing ones, creating an ongoing process of technological evolution. The book argues that the economy is not simply a setting for technology; it is itself continually created and restructured by the technologies it develops.
Combinatorial evolution. More recently, Arthur has been exploring a general mechanism of evolution that operates across a wide range of systems: combinatorial evolution. New elements arise by combining existing ones and become available as building blocks for further combinations. The process occurs in technology, chemistry, mathematics, computation, language, and parts of biology, helping explain how novelty accumulates and increasingly rich structures emerge over time.
Google Scholar Citations for W. Brian Arthur
Awards
Brian Arthur was awarded the inaugural Lagrange Prize in Complexity Science in 2008, and the Schumpeter Prize in Economics in 1990. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, 1987-88, Fellow of the Econometric Society, and IBM Faculty Fellow. He holds honorary doctorates from the National Univ. of Ireland (Galway) 2000, and Lancaster University (UK) 2009. He is a 2019 Citation Laureate, (an award made annually by Web of Science to “researchers of Nobel Class.”)
Books
The Nature of Technology: What it Is and How it Evolves, Simon & Schuster, 2009.
Complexity and the Economy, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, University of Michigan Press, 1994
Complexity Economics: Proc. of Applied Complexity Network, ed. with Eric Beinhocker and Alison Stanger, Santa Fe Inst. Press, 2021.
The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II, edited with Steven Durlauf and David Lane, Addison-Wesley, 1997
Complexity Economics: Proc. of Applied Complexity Network, ed. with Eric Beinhocker and Alison Stanger, Santa Fe Inst. Press, 2021.