The Economy That Keeps Becoming · Chapter Three
Where the Model Runs Thin
Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306
Chapter Three of The Economy That Keeps Becoming: Complexity Economics, Read as a Living System, for Leaders and Households.
Abstract
There is a keyboard on almost every desk in the English-speaking world whose top row of letters begins Q, W, E, R, T, Y. For a generation of economists it was the most famous object in their field. In 1985 the economic historian Paul David published a short paper in the American Economic Review called "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY". He told the story of the typewriter keyboard: designed in the 1870s, partly to keep the bars of early machines from jamming, adopted by the first successful manufacturers, taught in typing schools, and then fixed in place because every typist trained on it and every employer bought for it. A rival layout, patented by August Dvorak in the 1930s, was said to be faster. It never displaced the old one. David's point was the one W. Brian Arthur was making in theory at the same time: under increasing returns, history can lock a market into an arrangement that is not the best available.
Cite this chapter
Santa Anna, A. (2026). Where the Model Runs Thin. In The Economy That Keeps Becoming. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989454
@incollection{santaanna2026the3,
author = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
title = {Where the Model Runs Thin},
booktitle = {The Economy That Keeps Becoming},
chapter = {3},
publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23989454},
url = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/the-economy-that-keeps-becoming/03-where-the-model-runs-thin/}
}
References
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- Liebowitz, S. J., & Margolis, S. E. (1990). The fable of the keys. The Journal of Law and Economics, 33(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1086/467198
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- Farmer, J. D., & Foley, D. (2009). The economy needs agent-based modelling. Nature, 460, 685–686. https://doi.org/10.1038/460685a
- Unruh, G. C. (2000). Understanding carbon lock-in. Energy Policy, 28(12), 817–830. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-4215(00)00070-7
- Cowan, R. (1990). Nuclear power reactors: A study in technological lock-in. The Journal of Economic History, 50(3), 541–567. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700037153
- Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader's framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76. https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making. A practitioner framework; it is not an empirical study of decision outcomes. No DOI is registered for this article.
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- Chapter ThreeWhere the Model Runs Thindoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989454
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- Chapter FiveThe Valley and the Highwaydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989458
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