IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/ut72d_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Entropy Increase: A Fundamental Principle of Economic Evolution

Author

Listed:
  • Guo, Qilin

Abstract

This paper introduces the Principle of Economic Entropy Increase to elucidate the fundamental mechanism of economic growth: through the expansion of scale and diversification of structure, economic systems overcome both quantitative and structural forms of scarcity. Building on the concept of economic entropy, the study develops a dual-dimensional model—scale entropy and structural entropy—to enable the quantitative assessment of entropy dynamics within economic systems. Economic entropy increase originates from the system’s intrinsic structural demands and determines the macro trajectory of institutional evolution. Accordingly, this paper is the first to propose and systematically demonstrate the core proposition that the market economy constitutes the fundamental trajectory of economic evolution. Market economies, with their superior self-organizing and adaptive capacities, embody high-entropy structures; in contrast, planned economies, constrained by “long-chain interventions” that crowd out market mechanisms, exhibit low-entropy structures and are ultimately to be superseded. This framework offers a new lens for understanding economic growth, institutional selection, and the evolution of complex systems, with significant implications for policy design and economic governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Guo, Qilin, 2025. "Economic Entropy Increase: A Fundamental Principle of Economic Evolution," SocArXiv ut72d_v1, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:ut72d_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/ut72d_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/68371271356ac4b78ed6a61f/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/ut72d_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:ut72d_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.