UNIVERSAL FEATURES IN THE GROWTH DYNAMICS OF COMPLEX ORGANIZATIONS

We analyze the fluctuations in the gross domestic product (GDP) of 152 countries for the period 1950-1992. We find that (i) the distribution of annual growth rates for countries of a given GDP decays with ''fat ter'' tails than for a Gaussian, and (ii) the width of the distributio n scales as a power law of GDP with a scaling exponent beta approximat e to 0.15. Both findings are in surprising agreement with results on f irm growth. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the evolution of organizations with complex structure is governed by simil ar growth mechanisms. [S0031-9007(98)07339-6].