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Evolutionary economics sees the economy as always in motion with change being driven largely by continuing innovation. This approach to economics, heavily influenced by the work of Joseph Schumpeter, saw a revival as an alternative way of thinking about economic advancement as a result of Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter's seminal book, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, first published in 1982. In this long-awaited follow-up, Nelson is joined by leading figures in the field of evolutionary economics, reviewing in detail how this perspective has been manifest in various areas of economic inquiry where evolutionary economists have been active. Providing the perfect overview for interested economists and social scientists, readers will learn how in each of the diverse fields featured, evolutionary economics has enabled an improved understanding of how and why economic progress occurs.
Thorstein Veblen and Hyman Minsky are seminal thinkers who place great importance on the interaction between processes that link finance and financial markets with economic and social evolution. This book makes a contribution to the recontextualisation of the habitual, non-evolutionary and laissez-faire macroeconomic theory and policy, thus exposing the relevant contribution of the macro-theories of Veblen and Minsky. The book starts with an elucidation of Veblen’s cultural theory of insufficient private demand, waste and financial fragility and instability. It shows how speculative and parasitic leverage engenders solvency illusions and risk, pecuniary efficiency, low quality liability structures and socially destructive boom-bust cycles. Minsky’s creative destruction liquidity processes and coordination failures of cash flow escalate the aforementioned path-dependent developments and explosive dynamics of capitalist economies. The main themes of the book are the cultural, evolutionary and holistic vision of macroeconomics, the evolving habits of mind, routines and financial institutions, the speculative, manipulated and unstable financial markets, as well as the financial macroeconomic destabilizing effects of pecuniary and parasitic consumption and investment. This book will be of great interest to researchers, intellectuals and students pursuing economics and finance.
Economics is traditionally taken to be the social science concerned with the production, consumption, exchange, and distribution of wealth and commodities. Economists carefully track the comings and goings of the human household, whether written small (microeconomics) or large (macroeconomics) and attempt to predict future patterns under different situations. However, in constructing their models of economic behavior, economists often lose sight of the actual characteristics and motivations of their human subjects. In consequence, they have found the goal of an explanatory and predictive science to be elusive. Economics as an Evolutionary Science reorients economics toward a more direct appreciation of human nature, with an emphasis on what we have learned from recent advances in evolutionary science. The authors integrate economics and evolution to produce a social science that is rigorous, internally coherent, testable, and consistent with the natural sciences. The authors suggest an expanded definition of "fitness," as in Darwin's survival of the fittest, emphasizing not only the importance of reproduction and the quality of offspring, but also the unique ability of humans to provide material wealth to their children. The book offers a coherent explanation for the recent decline in fertility, which is shown to be consistent with the evolutionary goal of maximizing genetic success. In addition, the authors demonstrate the relevance to economics of several core concepts derived from biologists, including the genetics of parent-offspring conflict, inclusive fitness theory, and the phenomena of R-selection and K-selection. The keystone of their presentation is a cogent critique of the traditional concept of "utility." As the authors demonstrate, the concept can be modified to reflect the fundamental evolutionary principle whereby living things-including human beings-have been selected to behave in a manner that maximizes their genetic representation in future generations. Despite the extraordinary interest in applying evolutionary biology to other disciplines, Economics as an Evolutionary Science marks the first major attempt at a synthesis of biology and economics. Scholarly yet accessible, this volume offers unique and original perspectives on an entire discipline.
Alfred Marshall was one of the most important economists ever to have lived. This excellent new book, from a Marshall expert respected the world over, attempts to show that Marshall anticipated some of the views that are now associated with the cognitive sciences. Examining Marshall's philosophy of the human mind, his overall approach to economics, his concern for socio-economic issues, and the fertility of his framework, this book breathes fresh life into the fascinating world of Marshallian economics.
Evolutionary Economics: Program and Scope offers a fresh look at the paradigmatic foundations and basic theoretical propositions of economics. Twelve authors - each of them with his own distinct contribution to economics - make a step forward by reinterpreting major areas of micro and macroeconomics in line with modern evolutionary thinking. This volume offers a unified approach to economics that allows recent developments in various strands of Evolutionary Economics to be integrated and major positions of Neoclassical Economics to be reconsidered. The chapters on `Evolutionary Macro Economics' explore macro areas such as the division of labor and knowledge, technology and institutions, population thinking, meso economics, techno-economic trajectories and industrial sectors. By telescoping structure into time, they highlight the processes of structural change and co-evolution between technologies and institutions, and provide a causal-explanatory core for a modern - evolutionary - theory of economic growth and economic development. The chapters on `Evolutionary Micro Economics' offer insights into the knowledge based theories of the firm and take up the issues of cognitive and behavioral routines. The contributions explore the processes of complex human choice, creativity, and adaptation in selective and path-dependent environments. The discussions make an essential contribution to the cognitive and behavioral foundations of a modern institutional economics.
This book provides for the first time the microfoundations of evolutionary economics, enabling the reader to grasp a new framework for economic analysis that is compatible with evolutionary processes. Any independent approach to economics must include a value theory (or price theory) and price and quantity adjustment processes. Evolutionary economics has rightly and successfully concentrated its efforts on explaining evolutionary processes in technology and institutions. However, it does not have its own value theory and is not capable of explaining the workings of everyday economics processes, in which any evolutionary process would take place. Our point of departure is the addition of myopic agents with severely limited rational and forecasting capacities (in stark contrast to mainstream economics). We show how myopic agents, in a complex world, can produce a stable price system and demonstrate how they can adjust their production to changing demand flows. Agents behave without any knowledge of the overall process, and they generate a stable economy as large as the global network of exchanges. This is the true “miracle” of the market mechanism. In contrast to mainstream general equilibrium theory, this miracle can be explained without the need for an auctioneer or infinitely rational agents. Thanks to this book, evolutionary economics can now claim to be an independent approach to economics that can completely replace mainstream neoclassical economics.
This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.
Advances in physics, computers, and mathematics have made it possible to illustrate an astonishing array of potential behavior that can occur when nonlinear interactions are present. As Prigogine explains from a physicist's perspective, the fundamental role of instability and bounded rationality provide more precise understanding for evolution and changes. This volume considers these developments from various fields in the context of economic science. The work starts with a general non-mathematical discussion, introducing the major themes--nonlinearity, dynamical systems, and evolution in economic processes. The work continues with nonlinear analysis of macroeconomic growth and fluctuations. It describes analyses of economic adaptation, learning, and self-organization. The volume also scrutinizes a specific market--equities using nonlinear analysis, controlled experiments, and statistical inference when nonlinearity plays an essential role in data generation. The volume closes with an historical reflection by Richard Goodwin and a roundtable discussion on basic issues and new challenges in nonlinear economic dynamics.
First published in 1987, Evolutionary Macroeconomics offers an evolutionary approach to macroeconomics as an alternative to contemporary new classical and Keynesian macroeconomics. In order to develop such an approach, an alternative view of the micro-foundations of macroeconomics is presented. The book begins with a commentary on the state of macroeconomics and an evaluation of attempts to redevelop its underlying vision of economic behaviour. Particular attention is paid to the treatment of expectations and anticipations. The second part of the book presents a behavioural framework which is compatible with an evolutionary perspective on economic behaviour. The third part of the book discusses the implications of adopting an evolutionary approach to macroeconomic theory, empirical methods and policy design, culminating in a specific policy proposal to cure stagflation.