Memetics And Evolutionary Economics

This book explores the question of whether and how meme theory or "memetics" can be fruitfully utilized in evolutionary economics and proposes an approach known as "economemetics" which is a combination of meme theory and complexity theory that has the potential to combat the fragmentation of evolutionary economics while re-connecting the field with cultural evolutionary theory. By studying the intersection of cultural and economic evolution, complexity economics, computational economics, and network science, the authors establish a connection between memetics and evolutionary economics at different levels of investigation. The book first demonstrates how a memetic approach to economic evolution can help to reveal links and build bridges between different but complementary concepts in evolutionary economics. Secondly, it shows how organizational memetics can help to capture the complexity of organizational culture using meme mapping. Thirdly, it presents an agent-based simulation model of knowledge diffusion and assimilation in innovation networks from a memetic perspective. The authors then use agent-based modeling and social network analysis to evaluate the diffusion pattern of the Ice Bucket Challenge as an example of a "viral meme." Lastly, the book discusses the central issues of agency, creativity, and normativity in the context of economemetics and suggests promising avenues for further research. .

This book explores the question of whether and how meme theory or “memetics” can be fruitfully utilized in evolutionary economics and proposes an approach known as “economemetics” which is a combination of meme theory and complexity theory that has the potential to combat the fragmentation of evolutionary economics while re-connecting the field with cultural evolutionary theory. By studying the intersection of cultural and economic evolution, complexity economics, computational economics, and network science, the authors establish a connection between memetics and evolutionary economics at different levels of investigation. The book first demonstrates how a memetic approach to economic evolution can help to reveal links and build bridges between different but complementary concepts in evolutionary economics. Secondly, it shows how organizational memetics can help to capture the complexity of organizational culture using meme mapping. Thirdly, it presents an agent-based simulation model of knowledge diffusion and assimilation in innovation networks from a memetic perspective. The authors then use agent-based modeling and social network analysis to evaluate the diffusion pattern of the Ice Bucket Challenge as an example of a “viral meme.” Lastly, the book discusses the central issues of agency, creativity, and normativity in the context of economemetics and suggests promising avenues for further research.

This outstanding collection of essays by leading scholars helps explain how evolutionary economics has come of age. They show how evolutionary economics offers a progressive and diverse research agenda built on strong foundations. These are essays of lasting value. J. Stanley Metcalfe, University of Manchester, UK Darwinism is fast becoming an orthodoxy of modern thought, a framework within which a wide range of knowledge communities conduct their discourse. Ever since its formation, Darwinian theory has experienced a close, though not always comfortable, association with economics. Evolutionary economists now appear to show little concern for the consistency of knowledge in their embrace of Darwinism. Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics brings together contributions from eminent authors who, building on Darwin s own insights and on developments in evolutionary theory, offer challenging views on how economics can use evolutionary ideas effectively. This collection of critical essays provides a thorough examination of the application of Darwinian theory to economic thought, and will appeal to evolutionary economists and all those with an interest in Darwin, innovation and evolutionary science.

The new institutional economics offers one of the most exciting research agendas in economics today. Yet can it really explain processes of economic change? Economic Evolution explores three of the main approaches within the new institutional economics:* the new theory of the firm,* Nelson and Winter's evolutionary economics * game theoretic accoun

International experts discuss new applications for evolutionary economics

In reviewing this book in The Economic Journal, S.G. Checkland said that it should be read as a vigorous attempt to relate economics to general thinking and as a challenge to those who are practitioners or elaborators of narrowly prescribed techniques.

A new model of economic life that looks at it in terms of ecological interaction and mutation is presented in Evolutionary Economics. It looks at commodities, for example, as if they were a species in the social ecosystem. Boulding describes his new model with clarity and wit, showing its roots in classical economics and exploring the prospects of an evolutionary approach for bettering human conditions.

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.