Book Description

What do Darwin s theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics contribute to our understanding of the world in which we live? More than you think: the combination of both produces what is called a general systems theory of evolution. The second law of thermodynamics has been popularly formulated as: Systems that are left alone develop in a direction of increasing disorder . While buildings that are left alone develop into ruins, the reverse process requires the input of solid and skilled labor. On the other hand, evolution clearly proceeds in the direction of increased complexity. Ordered systems, such as human kind, evolved apparently spontaneously out of an initially unordered state. Information Asymmetries and the Creation of Economic Value has the challenging ambition of investigating the relationship between the former theories and the storage, processing and transfer of information to grasp the dynamics of economies, markets and industries, adding a practical side to the pure theory. This book develops a conceptually and mathematically consistent framework for existing concepts used in organizational economics. And it does so in a way accessible to readers that are not familiar with modeling approaches, overcoming the lack of consistency and accessibility that is common in econophysics and complementing, thus, existing approaches in the literature. An essential read for those that finally want to be able to understand and use evolutionary approaches to organizations, whether they are familiar with the subject or not. IOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics, scientists, and professionals in all fields. Some of the areas we publish in: -Biomedicine -Oncology -Artificial intelligence -Databases and information systems -Maritime engineering -Nanotechnology -Geoengineering -All aspects of physics -E-governance -E-commerce -The knowledge economy -Urban studies -Arms control -Understanding and responding to terrorism -Medical informatics -Computer Sciences