Energy and institution size.
Why do institutions grow? Despite nearly a century of scientific effort, there remains little consensus on this topic. This paper offers a new approach that focuses on energy consumption. A systematic relation exists between institution size and energy consumption per capita: as energy consumption increases, institutions become larger. I hypothesize that this relation results from the interplay between technological scale and human biological limitations. I also show how a simple stochastic model can be used to link energy consumption with firm dynamics.
York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Blair
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5898-9980
B
Fix
D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical