Frontiers In Evolutionary Economics

This compilation by leading protagonists is a must for a greater understanding of the world we are living in and wanting to see change for the better. Gerry Sweeney, Prometheus Modern evolutionary economics is now nearly two decades old and in this excellent book, a distinguished group of evolutionary economists identify the most important developments and discuss the direction of future research. By moving away from traditional concerns with the operation of selection mechanisms towards a preoccupation with the manner in which the novelty and variety provide fuel for such mechanisms, the authors identify a key development in the field. Evolutionary economists have been drawn into the modern complexity science literature which attempts to provide an understanding of how and why complex adaptive systems engage in processes of self-organization. The goal is to provide an integrated analysis of both selection and self-organization that is uniquely economic in orientation. After a brief overview of the many key achievements and continuing challenges, the first part of the book deals with theoretical perspectives, discussing institutional change, social constructions, complexity, selection and self-selection and the usefulness of theory. Part two deals with empirical perspectives and includes discussion of replicator dynamics, the measurement of heterogeneity and complexity, and modelling organizations as complex adaptive systems. This unique book will appeal to evolutionary and industrial economists and policymakers involved with issues of innovation and management scientists.

In March 1997, we launched the Japan Association for Evolutionary Economics {JAFEE) to gather the academic minds that, out of dissatisfaction with established dynamic approaches, were separately searching for new approaches to economics. To our surprise and joy,as many as 500members, including graduate students,joined us. Later that year Prof. Horst Hanusch, then President of the International [oseph A. Schumpeter Society, remarked that such a start would take a couple of decades in Europe to prepare for. Since then we have been developing our activities incessantly not only in terms of the number of members, but also in terms of the intensity of international academic exchange. Originally the planning of this book came about as the successful outcome of our fourth annual conference organized as an international one, JAFEE 2000.Incorporat ing other international contributions related to our preceding conferences, this book has eventually turned out to be one of the most enterprising anthologies on evolu tionary economics ever published. Specifically, it contains excellent papers on such topics as streams of evolutionary economics, evolutionary nonlinear dynamics, experimental economics and evolution, multiagent systems and complexity, new frontiers for evolutionary economics, and economic heresies. In short, this book will provide a vivid and full-fledged picture of up-to-date evolutionary economics.

The New Institutional Economics incorporates a theory of institutions into economics. It builds upon the fundamental assumptions of scarcity and competition but abandons institutional rationality. Consequently, NIE assumes that individuals make choices based on incomplete information and limited mental capacity, forming institutions to reduce uncertainty in human exchange. These insights have implications for technological change, property rights, and public choice. The Frontiers of the New Institutional Economics presents new essays written specifically for this volume. These essays Provide an introduction to the nature and practice of the New Institutional Economics, with a special emphasis on economic history and political economy. Among the contributors are Nobel Prize winners Douglass North and Robert Fogel. Key Features * Contains essays by Nobel Prize winners Douglass North and Robert Fogel * Presents a field of economics useful to students of political science and sociology. * Applicable to studies of technological change, property rights, and public choice

"The volume Applied Evolutionary Economics and Economic Geography is the fourth book published by Edward Elgar on applied evolutionary economics stems from the fourth European Meeting on Applied Evolutionary Economics (EMAEE) held in Utrecht, 19-21 May, 2

Throughout much of history, a critical driving force behind global economic development has been the response of society to the scarcity of key natural resources. Increasing scarcity raises the cost of exploiting existing natural resources and creates incentives in all economies to innovate and conserve more of these resources. However, economies have also responded to increasing scarcity by obtaining and developing more of these resources. Since the agricultural transition over 12,000 years ago, this exploitation of new 'frontiers' has often proved to be a pivotal human response to natural resource scarcity. This book provides a fascinating account of the contribution that natural resource exploitation has made to economic development in key eras of world history. This not only fills an important gap in the literature on economic history but also shows how we can draw lessons from these past epochs for attaining sustainable economic development in the world today.

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.