Santa Fe Institute

About: Santa Fe Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 558 authors who have published 4558 publications receiving 396015 citations. The organization is also known as: SFI.

A model of large-scale proteome evolution

Abstract: The next step in the understanding of the genome organization, after the determination of complete sequences, involves proteomics. The proteome includes the whole set of protein-protein interactions, and two recent independent studies have shown that its topology displays a number of surprising features shared by other complex networks, both natural and artificial. In order to understand the origins of this topology and its evolutionary implications, we present a simple model of proteome evolution that is able to reproduce many of the observed statistical regularities reported from the analysis of the yeast proteome. Our results suggest that the observed patterns can be explained by a process of gene duplication and diversification that would evolve proteome networks under a selection pressure, favoring robustness against failure of its individual components.

Topological vulnerability of the european power grid under errors and attacks

Abstract: We present an analysis of the topological structure and static tolerance to errors and attacks of the September 2003 actualization of the Union for the Coordination of Transport of Electricity (UCTE) power grid, involving thirty-three different networks. Though every power grid studied has exponential degree distribution and most of them lack typical small-world topology, they display patterns of reaction to node loss similar to those observed in scale-free networks. We have found that the node removal behavior can be logarithmically related to the power grid size. This logarithmic behavior would suggest that, though size favors fragility, growth can reduce it. We conclude that, with the ever-growing demand for power and reliability, actual planning strategies to increase transmission systems would have to take into account this relative increase in vulnerability with size, in order to facilitate and improve the power grid design and functioning.

The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism

Abstract: Cultural boundaries have often been the basis for discrimination, nationalism, religious wars, and genocide. Little is known, however, about how cultural groups form or the evolutionary forces behind group affiliation and ingroup favoritism. Hence, we examine these forces experimentally and show that arbitrary symbolic markers, though initially meaningless, evolve to play a key role in cultural group formation and ingroup favoritism because they enable a population of heterogeneous individuals to solve important coordination problems. This process requires that individuals differ in some critical but unobservable way and that their markers be freely and flexibly chosen. If these conditions are met, markers become accurate predictors of behavior. The resulting social environment includes strong incentives to bias interactions toward others with the same marker, and subjects accordingly show strong ingroup favoritism. When markers do not acquire meaning as accurate predictors of behavior, players show a markedly reduced taste for ingroup favoritism. Our results support the prominent evolutionary hypothesis that cultural processes can reshape the selective pressures facing individuals and so favor the evolution of behavioral traits not previously advantaged.

Supply and demand shocks in the COVID-19 pandemic: an industry and occupation perspective

Abstract: We provide quantitative predictions of first-order supply and demand shocks for the US economy associated with the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic at the level of individual occupations and industries. To analyze the supply shock, we classify industries as essential or non-essential and construct a Remote Labor Index, which measures the ability of different occupations to work from home. Demand shocks are based on a study of the likely effect of a severe influenza epidemic developed by the US Congressional Budget Office. Compared to the pre-COVID period, these shocks would threaten around 22 per cent of the US economy's [gross domestic product] GDP, jeopardise 24 per cent of jobs and reduce total wage income by 17 per cent. At the industry level, sectors such as transport are likely to have output constrained by demand shocks, while sectors relating to manufacturing, mining and services are more likely to be constrained by supply shocks. Entertainment, restaurants and tourism face large supply and demand shocks. At the occupation level, we show that high-wage occupations are relatively immune from adverse supply and demand side shocks, while low-wage occupations are much more vulnerable. We should emphasize that our results are only first-order shocks - we expect them to be substantially amplified by feedback effects in the production network.

Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior, and Earnings

Abstract: Suppose there is a principal-agent relationship between employer and employee in which effort is not contractible, but is elicited through employer incentive mechanisms. We term preferences that allow the employer to elicit effort at lower cost incentive enhancing. We analyze how such preferences affect earnings, nd then provide evidence that one of the relevant behavioral traits, efficacy, as well as other psychological aspects of individuals, are significant influences on earnings. We conclude that measures of cognitive performance are not sufficient indicators of the effectiveness of schools in promoting student labor market success, incentive enhancing preferences are irreducibly heterogeneous, incentive enhancing preferences help explain the persistence of poverty over generations within families and, unlike cognitive skills, incentive-enhancing traits need not be welfare increasing for their bearers.