Phenomena as diverse as breeding bird populations, the size of U.S. firms, money invested in mutual funds, and the scientific output of universities all show unusual but remarkably similar growth fluctuations. The fluctuations display characteristic features, including heavy tails and anomalous...

We propose a novel decomposition of the input-output linkage impact into linkage efficiency and linkage strength. We show that, for standard multisectoral models, countries' GDP growth rates are related to the average total backward linkages in the economy, which we call linkage strength, and to...