Field Of Evolutionary Economics Research Articles

Sustainable market transformation: A refined framework for analyzing causal loops in transitions to sustainability

This article proposes a refined conceptual framework to understand and act upon sustainable market transformation processes. Currently, there is a knowledge gap between government-oriented approaches to transition management and market formation that is addressed in evolutionary economics. Consequently, this article builds upon literature in the field of evolutionary economics, systems theory and transition management, to conceptualize the causal loops which trigger collective behavior facing sustainability issues. Furthermore, it proposes how these causal loops can be altered by interventions of actors in four sequential transition phases and illustrates what kind of interventions are most effective to accelerate a sustainable market transformation process. Promising avenues for future empirical studies based on the suggested conceptual framework, are the investigation of how the concepts of sustainable market transformation are applied in different market contexts and the evaluation of whether the applied interventions actually alter the underlying causal loops.

Chris Freeman's concept of evolution–A critique of the misuse of biological analogies in macroeconomics

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Chris Freeman, this paper presents an overview and analyzes his concept of economic evolution and his other contributions to the field of economics. Chris Freeman was one of the leading economists in the field of evolutionary economics during the second half of the twentieth century. Together with Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, as well as a number of other scholars, he contributed to establishing and developing a research program which extends from opening the black box of innovation through to the macroeconomic implications of long-term changes in the economy, technology and social organization. Additionally, Freeman suggested a new macroeconomic foundation for microeconomics – the unfinished legacy of our science. The chapter investigates how these foundations were developed as a critical view of inadequate metaphors from biology.

Firm age and performance

Amid increasing interest in firm age and its effects on firm performance, this special issue offers an exhaustive review of the literature and a novel collection of evidence on the effects of firm age on performance, including a special focus of interest on innovation performance, financial performance, exports, survival and growth. This editorial positions the theme in the extant literature, and provides key definitions and challenges ahead in the field of evolutionary economics. It introduces the collection of articles composing the special issue. The papers offer a diversity of country contexts, as well as analytical approaches and methods. They include an exhaustive review of the literature on age and firms’ performance, and present original empirical studies focusing on the effects of age on firms’ economic outcomes on the one hand, and on innovation outcomes on the other hand. While most of the papers use econometric analysis, the level of analysis ranges from firm to individual.

The Rhythms of Evolutionary Economics

The article analyzes the results of the jubilee X International Symposium on Evolutionary Economics “The Evolution of Economic Theory: Reproduction, Technology, Institutions”. The main scientific and organizational challenges in the field of evolutionary economics are discussed, promising areas of development of the evolutionary paradigm and related institutional and system paradigms are determined.

Evolvability and progress in evolutionary economics

This paper develops an account of evolutionary progress for use in the field of evolutionary economics. Previous work is surveyed and a new account set out, based on the idea of evolvability as it has been used recently in evolutionary developmental biology. The biological underpinnings of this idea are explained using examples of a series of phenomena that influence the evolvability of biological systems. It is further argued that biological and economic selection pressures and developmental processes are sufficiently similar to make this biological concept useful in economics. The new account is defended against a number of common objections to the notion of progress in evolving systems, including the claim that all stipulated measures of evolutionary progress are essentially arbitrary and the idea that economic evolutionary progress might not accord with the preferences of economic actors. It is argued that progress, understood as an increase in evolvability over time, is both philosophically well-justified and provides useful predictive and explanatory resources to those seeking to understand and manipulate evolving economic systems.

Social systems evolving—reviewing Leydesdorff’s the knowledge-based economy

Is the biological metaphor the proper one for evolutionary economics to pur-sue, given that it leads one to incorporate more from biology as an academicdiscipline than would be called for? Is the economy, the subject of analysis foreconomists, not fundamentally different from a biological or a natural system?These are the topics of ongoing discussion within the field of Evolutionary Eco-nomics that I will address only indirectly here, reviewing Loet Leydesdorff’s(2006a) recent book. They do linger in the background, however, needlessto say.Leydesdorff’s book offers significant theoretical insights and counter-pointsto the strand in evolutionary economics that aims to stay close to Darwin’sthinking (Hodgson and Knudsen 2006; special issues of the Witt 2006,andthe Klaes 2004). Rather than addressing this body of literature head on,dismantling it first before presenting his own views, Leydesdorff develops analternative perspective of how social systems evolve, largely without extensivereference to this literature. And as well he might, as there is a long history ofthought in the social sciences that he draws on besides the field of evolutionaryeconomics.In many respects, this book is the culmination of thinking in systems’ theory,science studies, scientometrics and related fields. It is unfortunate that theselines of research have not reached evolutionary economics. In addition to a

Book Reviews

Paul Ormerod of Volterra Consulting reviews “The General Theory of Economic Evolution” by Kurt Dopfer, Jason Potts,. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Presents a new analytic framework for the study of the nature and causes of long-run economic growth and development in market systems, based on the field of evolutionary economics. Discusses analytical foundations of evolutionary economics; micro-meso-macro analysis; generic micro analysis; meso analysis; macro coordination; macro dynamics, growth, and development; and generic policy. Dopfer is Professor of Economics at the University of St. Gallen. Potts is Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. Index.”

Turning Economics into an Evolutionary Science: Veblen, the Selection Metaphor, and Analogical Thinking

In his article, Why is not an evolutionary science? Thorstein Veblen says that economics is helplessly behind the times, and unable to handle its subject-matter in a way to entitle it to standing as a (1898b, 403). In addition, he claims that modern are evolutionary sciences (1898b, 403). A way to remedy this problem and to turn into an evolutionary science is to introduce aspects of Darwin's explanatory model of biological evolution to economic theory. However, there are different possibilities how Darwinian concepts can be harnessed to further develop economic theory. This problem has triggered a conceptual-methodological debate in the economic community. This paper discusses several explanatory approaches to economic phenomena the concept of routines, Universal Darwinism, and the continuity hypothesis that rely on concepts borrowed from biology. To emphasize the differences between these avenues, special attention is given to their dealing with the units and processes of selection in biological and economic evolution. Selectionist models analogous to phylogenetic biological evolution are prominent in many works in the field of evolutionary economics. Moreover, the relation of these approaches to Veblen's own notions and demands with regards to the conversion of into an evolutionary science is highlighted. How fruitful is the introduction of explanatory