Economic Growth, Distribution and Political Economy: A New Perspective

In the essays we employ the complex system perspective to analyze growth, distribution and related fundamental socioeconomic issues where the economy is viewed as a complex system with large degrees of freedom.;We first propose a non-homogeneous Poisson innovation growth model with no representative agent to show that the ultimate engine of sustainable economic growth stems from mutation-style innovation (not R & D style), which is the only mechanism consistent with ever-increasing degree of social disorder. Heterogeneous innovation impacts are also investigated. And we show that sectoral productivity distribution in an economic system does not degenerate to the social average productivity level but follows the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution instead, which in turn implies that aggregate demand has real impacts on total output.;The economic distribution issue is then investigated from the complex system perspective. We show that in closed economic systems, under weak assumptions, distribution in income or wealth inevitably evolves into polarization. Then we employ the continuous-time Simon-Yule process to analyze distribution in an open economic system with innovation and decreasing intergenerational influence. We show distribution polarization is impossible thereof and intergenerational type stability breaks down definitely at certain threshold phase.;Third, we study infinite variance, path dependence and two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet model. We find that mainstream neoclassical modeling approach has no sound mathematical foundation within our framework.;Then from a more general and philosophical perspective, we analyze several fundamental issues concerning economic research methodology and paradigm. We argue that the complex system perspective is insightful not only in natural sciences such as physics and biology, but also in economics, finance and other social sciences. We state that all economies, despite their particularities, evolve from low entropy (ordered) macrostate to high entropy (disordered) macrostate with the increasing emergence and development of complicated dissipative structures in every aspect of socioeconomic life. The introduction of the complex system perspective also helps to provide scientific solutions to many economic puzzles. Besides traditional economic research issues, we also analyze modern enterprises, megacities, political systems, judiciary systems and religions within our framework.