Economic Development via Collaborating Populations

Cooperation involves the integration of individual human efforts. When applied to a dyadic division of labor, production and trade, the most fundamental outcome is the unintentional mutual benefit of two parties. This is a fundamental tenet of economic growth through self-interest. Cooperation is manifest in various species in the animal kingdom. Collaboration opens the potential for innovation and the conversion of human capital imagination and creativity into new products and services, where mutual benefit is intentional. While cooperation is essential for ordinary economic growth, the path to extraordinary economic growth and development is collaboration → capitalization → gross domestic product → economic development. In economic development, consideration is given to both economic and social conditions. Collaboration is manifest in human beings and is responsible for superior development that would otherwise not be possible. It distinguishes the human species from all others.


Introduction
The terms collaboration and cooperation are sometimes confused. So are economic growth and economic development. In this research we are interested in collaboration and economic development based on epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological insights (Randrup, Druckemiller, & Briggs, 2016), so for clarity of purpose, we begin with the following definitions.
Definition. Cooperation is a plan and execution thereof by participants work-Theoretical Economics Letters ing together, each with their own personal self-interest and economic gain in mind yet yielding unintended mutual benefits.
Definition. Collaboration is a plan and execution thereof by participants working together for their intentional mutual benefit of shared goals, objectives, and rewards.
Definition. Economic growth is the improvement in per capita real gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing power parity.
Definition. Economic development is the improvement in infrastructure and social wellbeing.

Wealth
For wealth to exist, it must first be created. The source of wealth is human capital ideas of imagination and creativity. The creation process is epitomized by collaboration in the conversion of capital to per capita real gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity (GDPppp). GDPppp is a measure of standard of living, albeit not uniformly distributed. GDP is the value of all the products and services that an economy produces. After consumption, the remainder is a contribution to wealth. After that, it can be moved from person to person, community to community, economic sector to economic sector, and country to country. Simultaneously, wealth is dissipated by the mechanism of depreciation. If there is no reinvestment in the economy and no new human capital ideas, wealth will decline monotonically, eventually to zero.

Creation
The process of creation can involve transformation and/or conversion. Transformation involves rearrangement to create new manifestations, effects, or outcomes. For example, the assembly of component parts to produce a new product. Conversion involves changing the essence of something from one expression to another. For example, ideas into machines, machines into products, products into money. Money obtained from the sales of products is a method of counting wealth. It is not in itself wealth.

Collaboration vs cooperation
People cooperate routinely with self-interest and economic gain in mind. This is the basis of extant economic literature and current thinking. It is also the claim of morality in objectivism (Rand, 1961(Rand, , 1990. It is also justified by Adam Smith's (1776Smith's ( , 2010 invisible hand characterization of the positive unintended consequences of the individual pursuit of one's own wants and needs. The butcher, the baker, and the brewer provide goods and services to each other out of self-interest and the unplanned result of this division of labor is a better standard of living for all three. But this is cooperation, not collaboration (see Figure   1). The mainstream of the field of economics gives explicit consideration to cooperation but much less to collaboration. In mainstream economics, Hayek (1945Hayek ( , 1994) depicts a market economy as a mechanism of cooperation that allows people to take advantage of the knowledge others have without having to acquire the knowledge themselves. In political philosophy and distributive justice, Rawls (1971) D. Ridley DOI: 10.4236/tel.2021.116070 1103 Theoretical Economics Letters uses the term cooperation to expound on a concept of social justice. It is not unusual for cooperation and collaboration to be confused. As a result, the extant literature refers to all community economic development as collaboration when in fact it is cooperation wherein participating entities are working together with their self-interest in mind, not collaboration. When correctly defined, the economic literature on collaboration shrinks. For example, Lowitt (2013) explicitly describes an economy in which "private, public, and civil sectors work together for their own good and for the collective." But this is not collaboration because the parties are working for "their own good." Our research pertains strictly to mainstream economic collaboration. This is not a mere semantic distinction.
Collaboration is operationally different from cooperation and produces quite different outcomes. Collaboration creates things that were not previously in existence. This paper contributes what might be considered the study of the advancement from economic cooperation to economic collaboration for the purpose of extraordinary development.
Before the work of psychologist (Tomasello, 2001;Tomasello et al., 2012), cognitive scientists studied human aggression to explain human interactive behavior. Economists studied cooperation and self-interest. As an alternative, in his study of ontogeny, Tomasello observed that while cooperation can result in the unintended consequences of mutual benefit, collaboration is planned intentionally by participants to provide for their mutual benefit. Collaboration includes cooperation but goes beyond cooperation in so far as it exceeds its capability for human advancement and economic development. Intentional mutual consequences are measured relative to shared goals. An example of collaboration that is of particular interest here is the fundamental elements of capitalism, democracy, and rule of law acting in pursuit of extraordinary economic growth.
Together with natural resources and geography, these explain 90% of GDPppp, and human capital constitutes 85% of total capital (Ridley, 2020a(Ridley, , 2020b boration. "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change" (Darwin, 1809(Darwin, -1882. Ridley (2020aRidley ( , 2020b refers to entrepreneurship as an act of giving. In order for one to recognize that it is collaboration as opposed to intelligence that is responsible for the extraordinary engineering achievements of mankind, one only has to imagine millions of the most super-intelligent people working not together but separately. How will that work out for them? Division of labor, production and trade will provide for the efficient deployment of endogenous capital stock, and ordinary economic growth ("many hands make light work," John Heywood (1497-1580)). We measure this by improvement in GDP. But Ridley (2018Ridley ( , 2020a shows that 21% of GDP is required for reinvestment in growth and to cover maintenance, depreciation and obsolescence. Without reinvestment, GDP will decline and its contribution to wealth will decline monotonically to zero. Exogenous human capital ideas of imagination and creativity are required for the creation of new products and services for new economic growth ("teamwork makes the dream work" (Maxwell, 2002)).
This process requires collaboration. At the time of this collaboration, there is no clearly identifiable product to trade and therefore no measurable self-interest.
There has to exist a human propensity to collaborate for planned intentional mutual benefit. Inventors can only envisage applications, utility and benefit of their technology to their community. We attribute their collaboration to that which is borne out of altruism.

Development
In this paper, we consider the division of reinvestment into two parts, namely private reinvestment and public reinvestment. We are interested in the public sector reinvestments in infrastructure, education, health care and welfare transfer payments. The purpose of this paper is to explore the way in which collaboration can apply a part of reinvestment obtained from taxation to the development of the economy for the benefit of people and society, and the advancement of future economic growth. Entrepreneurship (see also Schumpeter (1911Schumpeter ( , 1928Schumpeter ( , 1954 who initiated the theory of economic growth based on entrepreneurship) via collaboration, has demonstrated the creation of massive wealth in some countries (Ridley, 2020a(Ridley, , 2020bde Silva, Ridley, & Green, 2020;Ngnepieba et al., 2018). One would think that such massive wealth could provide an adequate living standard for all members of society. Economic growth is necessary but not sufficient for economic development. Per capita GDP is an average, but it is not necessarily uniformly distributed. A high GDP may be Pareto (1906Pareto ( , 1848Pareto ( -1923 distributed such that there are a few rich people and many poor people. The rich might very well be deserving of the money that they earn and praise for the jobs they create, and the poor may not be entitled to the money earned by the rich.
So, to improve the possibility of a large middle class, government reinvestments in the development of infrastructure: roads, air and seaports, housing, healthcare, education, water, gas, electricity, sanitation, democracy, rule of law, anti- value that can be converted to even more wealth. Much of the infrastructure required for social wellbeing is also required by the private sector. For example, roads transport goods directly or indirectly from factories to commercial distribution outlets. Roads also transport customers to distribution outlets. Therefore, the users of roads are symbiotic. Likewise, so are health, water, and education, etc. Still, no one entity is willing to provide these infrastructures for the free usage of all entities. Therefore, they must be accomplished collectively by means of government and government funding must be obtained from taxes. Hence there are shared goals, objectives, and rewards, making development a collaborative enterprise.

Research question
We know that collaboration converts capital into extraordinary economic growth. The research question then is: does collaboration result in the conversion of economic growth into extraordinary economic development and how does this occur in practice? This paper illustrates how collaboration leads to extraordinary economic development.

Organization
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 is a review of related literature on the economics of cooperation and the psychology of collaboration. Section 3 is a discussion on related development. Section 4 summarizes conclusions and suggestions for future research.

Psychology
One crucial way in which human beings are unique is their brain size (Gavrilets, 2015;Alexander, 1990;Striedter, 2005;Geary, 2010;Roth & Dicke, 2005;Flinn, Geary, & Ward, 2005;Whiten & Erdal, 2011). The brain is metabolically expensive as it represents about 2% of body weight but consumes 20% of body energy (Shultz, Nelson, & Dunbar, 2012;Holloway, 1996). A reason why one might question the existence of collaboration is related to what is known as the collective action problem. Given the high energy cost of operating the brain, why would a human being that is a member of a group wish to collaborate for the benefit of others? Why not simply let someone else make the effort, save energy and receive the related rewards? (Olson, 1965;Ostrom, 1990;Batina & Ihori, 2005). Of course, should too many members of the group relinquish their implied responsibilities, the group may become genetically dimorphic. Very few serving the public good and many free riders, the group will likely perish when and wheresoever it is exposed to the vagaries of nature, predators and competing groups. This collective action problem is particularly challenging for animals and human beings (Nunn, 2000;Kitchen & Beehner, 2007;Willems, Hellriegel, & Schaik, 2013). Nevertheless, it turns out that the human being, in particular,

Economics
The mainstream economics literature is replete with research on cooperation but not collaboration. The term cooperation invokes ideas such as game theory. But in fact, game theory as proposed by von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947) and Nash (1950Nash ( , 1951 is concerned with strategic interactions among non-cooperating competing rational participants acting in their own self-interest. Not cooperation much less collaboration. Cooperation, collaboration and coordination are often used interchangeably. We are interested in collaboration where shared goals apply. For example, Chopra and Meindl (2001) refer to coordination in supply chain management without which the supply chain profit cannot be maximized. And it is only when the supply chain profit is maximized that the profits of the member companies of the supply chain will be maximized. Since (2020) propose a macroeconomic model in which variation in the level of trust leads to higher innovation, investment, and productivity growth. Growth is a prerequisite for development and more recent research provides evidence of a causal link between trust and economic development (Tabellini, 2010). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2011) elaborates on mechanisms for collaboration. The three dominant theoretical paradigms used to explain European security cooperation-constructivism, institutionalism and liberalism-each yield distinct predictions in this regard (Devore & Stai, 2019). Consequently, when firms calculate that they would be better served by a national project they will lobby governments to withdraw from collaborative ones. In a similar analysis, Tucker (1991) claims that discrepancies in corporations' size and capabilities facilitates collaboration. Firms of an analogous size and with similar core competencies will, within this context, fail to collaborate because of their preoccupation with relative gains, while those that differ will face fewer obstacles. It is thus complementary, rather than competitive, corporations that will collaborate most effectively. Ljungholm (2014) examines the process by which citizens and stakeholders collaborate to make, carry out, and enforce public policy.

Economic Development through Collaboration
Economic development is the process by which the overall health, well-being, Growth for the sake of growth is not unlike intranational mercantilism. What if growth occurs in the midst of persistent poverty? What if the unemployed were once employed in an industry where their efforts led to automation and their replacement by machines, at least until they acquire more education and skills?
What if unemployment results in haves and have nots, speculation on conspiracies (whether justifiable or not), social unrest and rioting? Our focus on collaboration then, is on its role in reinvestment in the wellbeing of society as a whole.
A solution for ending unemployment is discussed later at the end of this section.

Innovation as a Proxy for Collaboration
We posit that collaboration is necessary for extraordinary economic development. We assume that GDP that can support development already exists. There are no published data for collaboration by country. But collaboration is often used synonymously with innovation (Hastings & Meyer, 2020 (2021) showed that the indicator of successful learning is the normal distribution of test scores obtained by active learning teaching methodology. They suggest that the key element of active learning responsible for success is collaboration (see also Volpe, 1984). It seems reasonable to think that education has consequences for economic development. So, this is our preliminary indicator that collaboration is a causal factor in both education and development. The distribution of capital (including that required from learning) is Pareto (1906Pareto ( , 1848Pareto ( -1923

Distribution
Our investigation begins with an analysis of the distribution of HDI and the extent of current achievement in development. A histogram of HDI is given in Figure 2. The shape has the appearance of a positive exponential distribution.
About one-fifth (18 countries) have not achieved a functional level of HDI (below 0.72). We speculate that low levels of HDI are due to a lack of collaboration, ceteris paribus. High HDI cannot be achieved without collaboration. Collaboration is a worthwhile, easily available, accessible feature of humanity that many countries have not availed themselves of.

HDI vs GII
Next, we consider the impact of GII. A graph of HDI versus GII is plotted in Figure 3. From the graph, we see that HDI is highly positively correlated with GII. As innovation increases, so does human development.     , where υ is the number of degrees of freedom, we conclude with a level of significance α = 1% that there is a statistically significant relationship between HDI and GII. The coefficients for N and L are evaluated similarly and found to be statistically significant. There is only a 1% chance that this conclusion is reached erroneously.
The partial correlations (r) show the contributions from GII, N and L to explaining the variation in hdi. GII contributes 71%. Although N and L are significant, they contribute only 3% each and are therefore negligible. We, therefore, attribute human development to collaboration.
A plot of the residuals is shown in Figure 4. It has the appearance of being random. There are no patterns that imply any missing variables. The distribution of the residuals is shown in Figure 5. It has the appearance of being near symmetrical, with some skewness to the left. A normal probability plot is shown in Figure 6   The theoretical JB statistic follows a Chi-square distribution. With a 0.01 level of significance and 2 degrees of freedom, Chi-square = 9.21. Since JB = 8.36< 9.21, at the specified level of significance, we accept that the residuals are normally distributed.

Causation
The small size of GII 0.006825 b = might create an impression that the effect of GII on hdi is small. But this slope coefficient would be large if the scale value were made smaller. The important thing is the large t ratio. The regression analysis tells us that HDI and GII are highly correlated, but it does not imply causation.  Also, GII is exogenous so it cannot be caused by HDI. Therefore, if in fact there is causation, it must be that GII causes HDI. What the significance of the statistical fit, and the closeness of the data points to the line in Figure 3 tells us is that the way that collaboration (proxied by GII) converts economic growth into economic development is close to being the same everywhere in the world. That is, there is no significant difference from country to country. However, some countries exhibit a high level of collaboration and experience a high level of development, ceteris paribus. On the other hand, some countries exhibit a low level of collaboration and experience a low level of economic development. Therefore, as a policy choice it is better to collaborate, and to do so maximally. It is pointless to opine about the absence of natural resources and geography.
Remark 1. The low (3%) contribution of natural resources may be surprising.
However, if one thinks about it, many high natural course countries are poor (Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, etc.) and low natural resource countries are rich (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, etc.). There is also the natural resource curse that in the absence of collaboration can induce currency mismanagement, loss of traditional craft and agricultural exports, unemployment, corruption, and social chaos (Auty, 1993;Humphreys, 2005;Norman, 2009;Sachs & Warner, 2001;Ross, 2001;Sachs & Warner, 2001;Wadho, 2014). What might otherwise be a geographical inequality due to latitude is easily overcome simply by collaborating in trade to even the playing field.
Remark 2. Knowledge (and education) are derived from human development Remark 3. The possibility of capital contributing to HDI was a consideration.
Total market capitalization was the variable used. When it was added to the regression model, its coefficient was not statistically significant. Therefore, it was omitted from the final model.  (Faria et al., 2016). Even if it were true that genetic inheritance includes human capital that is passed on through knowledge and skills by nature and nurture, then such capital is transportable between countries. All capital, including human capital will travel from undemocratic law unabiding countries to democratic lawabiding countries where collaboration is practiced. There, it will be applied to promote development.

Collaboration vs Genetic Variance
In any case, even if a country is immutably stuck with less than maximal talent, it should still focus on raising its level of collaboration to maximize its own economic development.

Collaboration in Decision Making
Many decisions that relate to development projects require a democratic process as an element of collaboration. Ridley and de Silva (2019) show how corrupt dictatorship is an obstacle to economic growth. Such a democratic process may require voting on projects to be chosen. From Arrow's (1963)  This is just as well since there is no such thing as social welfare. Welfare is a concept that applies only to individuals.
An influence diagram in Figure 7 depicts the factors influencing economic  After consumption, the remaining wealth must be intentionally converted to economic development. The lower right side of the schematic diagram represents public sector activities. Cooperation is required for ordinary economic development and collaboration is required for extraordinary economic development.
Both the private sector and the public sector utilize the infrastructure developed, subject to depreciation, to continue future economic growth. The public sector development activities depicted in Figure 7 are typically macro-economic in design. But some activities will need to be micro-economic. For example, the nonphysical activities of unemployment compensation and welfare transfer payments. While these have the appearance of being macro-economic, contrary to commonly held beliefs, welfare is a concept that applies only to individuals.
Therefore, these are questions for microeconomics.
An alternative micro-economic proposal by Friedman (2002) and Friedman and Friedman (1980) was referred to as a negative income tax. Another proposal is universal basic income. Yet another is the symbiotic micro-economic development collaboration between a government and a private business employer referred to as micro intrapreneurship (Ridley, 2017). We recognize that the only source of GDPppp growth is human capital ideas of imagination and creativity (Ridley, 2020a(Ridley, , 2020b. And the source of funding for economic development is GDPppp. Therefore, it behooves us to maintain where possible an educated and healthy population in society. The Ridley (2017) micro intrapreneurship proposal is one wherein the government subsidizes the wages of the inexperienced job seeker. The idea is to provide everybody at least a living wage. The amount of the subsidy is the difference between what an employer values him and is willing to pay, and the living wage. To receive the subsidy, the recipient must work.
Work experience is a way for him to acquire the skills needed to close the gap.
This might occur in just a few months. When the worker becomes revalued up to the living wage, the government subsidy ends, he can then join the pool of employees who might discover some potential improvements to the operations.
His closeness to a particular low-level job activity might allow him to see options that the engineer in a far-removed office would not see. These can then be brought to the attention of the engineer for consideration. That will also benefit D. Ridley DOI: 10.4236/tel.2021DOI: 10.4236/tel. .116070 1117 Theoretical Economics Letters the economy as it contributes to economic growth. This is a better alternative to welfare transfer payments, the negative income tax, and universal basic income, wherein the recipient is unemployed and therefore represents dead capital. Ridley and Koroviakovskya (2021) suggest that while cooperation is responsible for ordinary economic growth, collaboration is responsible for extraordinary economic growth, engineering, and technological achievements. Ridley, Ngnepieba and de Silva (2021) show that learning that takes place in a collaborative mode produces superior outcomes. Superior collaborative learning and outcomes, and subsequent collaborations might also serve in infrastructure and workforce development, and future economic growth. Economic growth is the source of financing economic development. But it does not happen automatically. Deliberate actions are required to construct infrastructure that we recognize as evidence of development. Ridley (2020aRidley ( , 2020b shows that government spending, country size, location, culture and population physical characteristics have a negligible effect on GDPppp. However, infrastructure that is required for economic development will not be constructed by any one person or corporation for the benefit of all others. Therefore, government spending is required for collective and collaborative infrastructure development.

Conclusion
We investigate the relationship between collaboration and economic development. There are no published data for collaboration, so innovation is used as a proxy for collaboration. The two are often used interchangeably. The proxy for economic development is the human development index. We show that there is a significant correlation between collaboration and economic development. Collaboration is obviously exogenous and cannot be caused by economic development. Therefore, if there is a causal relationship between the two, collaboration must be the cause of economic development. About one-fifth of all countries have not attained a functional level of economic development. Collaboration is a feature of humanity that those countries have not availed themselves of. Raising their level of collaboration will facilitate a rise in their level of economic development. Even if certain limiting human or environmental characteristics are obstacles in some nations, collaboration is salutary to economic development in terms of making the best of what is possible. Future research might investigate the causes of why some countries do not collaborate even though it is an easily accessible natural social cognitive competence, and so beneficial to economic development.