The Citation Field of Evolutionary Economics

Evolutionary economics has developed into an academic field of its own, institutionalized around, amongst others, the Journal of Evolutionary Economics (JEE). This paper analyzes the way and extent to which evolutionary economics has become an interdisciplinary journal, as its aim was: a journal that is indispensable in the exchange of expert knowledge on topics and using approaches that relate naturally with it. Analyzing citation data for the relevant academic field for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, we use insights from scientometrics and social network analysis to find that, indeed, the JEE is a central player in this interdisciplinary field aiming mostly at understanding technological and regional dynamics. It does not, however, link firmly with the natural sciences (including biology) nor to management sciences, entrepreneurship, and organization studies. Another journal that could be perceived to have evolutionary acumen, the Journal of Economic Issues, does relate to heterodox economics journals and is relatively more involved in discussing issues of firm and industry organization. The JEE seems most keen to develop theoretical insights

Fundamental Fields of: Post-Schumpeterian Evolutionary Economics

Although the branch of economics that deals with economic evolution has become established during the last couple of decades, its aims and potentials can most easily be understood on the background of the work of early pioneers. Joseph A. Schumpeter’s contribution not only analysed capitalist economic evolution as a process of the innovative renewal of business routines. He also explored the idea that the development of economics requires coordinated efforts within the “fundamental fields” of theory, history, statistics, and economic sociology. The paper applies this idea in an analysis of the development of modern evolutionary economics. The focus is on the characteristics and interdependencies of evolutionary history, evolutionary theory, and evolutionary statistics.Evolutionary economics; fundamental fields; Joseph A. Schumpeter

Exploring Evolutionary Economic Geographies

Evolutionary approaches in economics have gathered increasing support over the last 25 years. Despite an impressive body of literature, economists are still far from formulating a coherent research paradigm. The multitude of approaches in evolutionary economics poses problems for the development of an evolutionary economic geography. For the most part, evolutionary economic geography imports selective concepts from evolutionary biology and economics and applies those concepts to specific problems within economic geography. We discuss a number of problems with this approach and suggest that a more powerful and appealing alternative requires the development of theoretically consistent models of evolutionary processes. This paper outlines the contours of an evolutionary model of economic dynamics where economic agents are located in different geographical spaces. We seek to show how competition between those agents, based on the core evolutionary principles of variety, selection and retention, may produce distinct economic regions sharing properties that differentiate them from competitors elsewhere. These arguments are extended to illustrate how the emergent properties of economic agents and places co-evolve and lead to different trajectories of economic development over space.evolutionary economics, economic geography, Generalized Darwinism, biological metaphors, self-organization

Applications of Evolutionary Economic Geography

This paper is written as the first chapter of an edited volume on evolutionary economics and economic geography (Frenken, K., editor, Applied Evolutionary Economics and Economic Geography, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, expected publication date February 2007). The paper reviews empirical applications of evolutionary economics in the field of economic geography. The review is divided in four parts: the micro-level of the firm, the meso-levels of industry and network, and the macro-level of spatial system. Some remarks on evolutionary policy in regional development are added as well as a short discussion of empirical problems that remain.

Models in evolutionary economics and environmental policy: Towards an evolutionary environmental economics

In this paper we review evolutionary economic modelling in relation to environmental policy. We discuss three areas in which evolutionary economic models have a particularly high added value for environmental policy-making: the double externality problem, technological transitions and consumer demand. We explore the possibilities to apply evolutionary economic models in environmental policy assessment, including the opportunities for making policy-making endogenous to environmental innovation. We end with a critical discussion of the challenges that remain.

Structural changes in economics during the last fifty years

This essay portrays the major currents in recent economic thinking against the orthodoxy and dogmatism of neoclassical economics. It places behavioral economics, experimental economics, evolutionary economics, ecological economics, new institutional economics, agent-based computational economics and post-autistic economics vis-à-vis the classical and the neoclassical economics. It concludes that we may expect a synthesis of all these strands of economic thinking in the near future that will replace neoclassical economics from the citadel of mainstream. Teaching of these strands of new economics has already begun in many universities, although in an un-integrated manner. However, until the neoclassical microeconomics and macroeconomics are replaced by their alternatives and necessary as well as convincing tools of economic analysis are developed, neoclassicism would not give way to modern economics.Behavioral; experimental; evolutionary; ecological; new institutional; agent-based computational; post-autistic; classical; neoclassical, economics; bounded rationality; heterodox; individualism; pluralism

Does Mother Nature Punish Rotten Kids?

This paper studies the evolutionary game theory of parent-offspring conflict. It revisits a question posed by Gary Becker in economics and Richard Alexander in biology, namely "when do children act in accord with the reproductive interests of their parents?"biology evolutionary game theory parent-offspring conflict family economics

Technological innovation, institutions and human purposefulness in socioeconomic evolution: A preface to Christopher Freeman "Systems of Innovation. Selected Essays in Evolutionary Economics"

Christopher Freeman; National Systems of Innovation; Techno-economic paradigms; Variety of capitalisms; Political economics; Evolutionary Economics

Rationality and choices in economics: behavioral and evolutionary approaches

The paper critically discusses the issue of rationality and choices in economics in both the behavioural and evolutionary approaches. Our study aims, on the one hand, to highlight the scientific contributions of psychology in economics, since psychology, and with it the theoretical approach of the behavioral economics, has made more complex and problematic the analysis of economic choices, showing the limits of rationality. On the other hand, the work offers a reinterpretation of the theory of Alfred Marshall in a biologicalevolutionary perspective. The reinterpretation of Marshall's theory in a evolutionary perspective aims to show that, historically, economics has not been a discipline aligned in a homogenous way to a single and undifferentiated thought, locked into the idea of perfect rationality, but, on the opposite, is a discipline that has enriched itself and continually is enriching by contributions and significant contaminations with other research fields.rationality; choices; behavioral economics; evolutionary theories; biology;