Alex Tabarrok links to a short post today by a couple of researchers who study the transmission of ideas throughout history. Their conclusion is that the speed of diffusion depends on a country’s “genetic distance” from the source of the idea, and when I first read this I thought they were using genetic distance as a metaphor of some kind. That is, they were measuring the distance between various cultures, and the math happened to be similar to the math for measuring the genetic distance between human population groups, so that’s what they called it.
But no. The two researchers, Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, are literally talking about population genetics.
Read the full, original story here: How Population Genetics May Help Explain Economic Growth
