Multiple Timescale Dynamics in Economic Production Networks

Abstract

We describe a new complex system model of an evolving production economy. This model is the simplest we can envisage which incorporates the new observation that the rate of an economic production process depends only on the minimum of its supplies of inputs. We describe how this condition gives rise to a new type of complex multiple timescale dynamical evolution through a novel type of bifurcation we call a `trapping bifurcation', which is also shown to be one cause of non-equilibrium economic behaviour. Such dynamics is an example of meta-level coupling which may also arise in other fields such as the organization of a living cell as a network of molecular machines.