Empirical scaling and dynamical regimes for GDP: challenges and opportunities

Analysis of GDP data and per capita GDP data from 1980 and 2016 finds three scaling regions. The GDP of the largest ~25 economies (nations, EU) follows a power law GDP ~ 1/rank; this is followed by a second scaling region in which GDP falls off exponentially with rank and finally a third scaling region in which the GDP falls off exponentially with the square of rank. The distribution of per capita GDP also displays these three scaling regions. Both patterns hold despite significant changes in technology, the size of the world economy, emergence of new economic powers such, and world trade (almost free communication, containerized shipping yielding sharp declines in shipping costs). Thus, empirically, these patterns may be universal [1-5]; in which case one of the targets for growth of those in the second and third scaling regions may be to identify and target causative differences between these economies and those in the first (power law) scaling region.
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