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Structure and Dynamics

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The Structure and Dynamics eJournal welcomes articles, book reviews, data, simulations, research material, and special issues that examine aspects of human evolution, social structure and behavior, culture, cognition, or related topics. Our goal is to advance the historic mission of anthropology in the broadest sense to describe and explain the range of variation in human biology, society, culture and civilization across time and space. Submissions of databases, software tutorials, programs, and teaching materials are welcomed, as are communications on research materials of interest to a wide variety of science and social science researchers, including networks, dynamical models, and complexity research and related genre.

Articles

GLOBAL ECONOMIC DYNAMICS OF THE FORTHCOMING YEARS: A FORECAST

The paper analyzes the current state of the world economy and offers a short-term forecast of its development. Our analysis of log-periodic oscillations in the DJIA dynamics suggests that in the second half of 2017 the United States and other more developed countries could experience a new recession, due to the third phase of the global financial crisis. The economies of developing countries will continue their slowdown due to lower prices of raw commodities and the increased pressure of dollar debt load. The bottom of the slowdown in global economic growth is likely to be achieved in 2017-2018. Then we expect the start of a new acceleration of global economic growth at the upswing phase of the 6th Kondratieff cycle (2018-2050). A speedy and steady withdrawal from the third phase of the global financial crisis requires cooperative action between developed and developing countries within G20 to stimulate global demand, world trade and a fair solution of the debt problem of developing countries.

The Gift and the Centipede

This paper addresses the similarity between behavioural economics and social anthropology with respect to approaches on repeated reciprocity. The case at hand is the application of the Centipede game to Marcel Mauss's concept of the Gift. In a Centipede game players interact in an alternating sequence of decisions to take or to pass an endowment. Mauss describes sequences of reciprocal giving in potlatch cultures, in which strict obligations determine choice options. The paper shows that models developed in behavioural economics, such as the Centipede game, can also be applied to prominent contexts in economic anthropology.