The Characteristic Time Scale of Cultural Evolution

Memory Effects, Multiple Time Scales and Local Stability in Langevin Models of the S&P500 Market Correlation

“…On the other hand, long-term “economic climate evolution” takes place on much slower time-scales. Examples could be innovation processes and technical revolutions such as the invention of the steam engine or the internet, economic cycle theories such as that of Marx ( 2 to 10 years) [ 46 , 47 ], Keynes, Schumpeter or Kondratjew [ 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ], cycles of fiscal and demographic developments [ 52 ], cultural evolution [ 53 ] and generational changes influencing economic reasoning, adaptions to climate change and the scarcity of resources and much more. Keeping that in mind, the trading day resolution of the data is rather fine-grained and it might be reasonable to assume that a hidden slow time scale is present in the data.…”

“…In contrast to the fast time scales, the long-term evolution of the “economic climate” might involve innovation processes and technical revolutions such as the invention of the steam engine or the internet, economic cycle theories like that of Marx ( 2 to 10 years), Keynes, Schumpeter or Kondratjew [ 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ], cultural evolution [ 53 ] and generational changes influencing economic reasoning, adaptions to climate change and the scarcity of resources and much more. However, we were not able to derive an economically reasonable magnitude of the slow time scale, which we would expect to lie in the range of decades up to hundreds of years, corresponding to well-known economic cycle theories or cultural evolution processes.…”