Evolutionary economics and the competition between scientific paradigms

Abstract

The choice of physics as a model for the development of economic theory, a methodological direction which has been particularly dominant since the Second World War, has increasingly been criticized by economists, and not only by evolutionary economists, but by members of a variety of schools. Many of these critics see biology as an alternative methodological direction that merits investigation. Modelling economics on biology is not a new idea; it is an attempt to revisit a number of questions which were left behind at the turn of the twentiieth century. Thus the fundamental ques- tion is whether the concept of evolutionary economics was abandoned prematurely, or for good reasons. At present, it seems that the unifying position of these different “evolutionists” seems to be a growing contempt with the neoclassical economics, especially to its simplifying assumptions, which take inventions, innovations and dissem- ination of information as external variables The concepts that schumpeter used have been a source of inspiration for Neo-Schumpeterian and new evolutionary eco- nomics. His indication that evolution is an endogenous change process, his equilibrium propensity, and his non-equilibrium con- cepts, his emphasis on uncertainty, and his indication that the na- ture of economics evolution is imbalanced actually demonstrate that schumpeter could be categorized both in Neo-schumpete- rian and new evolutionary economics categories.