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The concept of choice: why and how innovative behaviour is not just stochastic

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Abstract

The goal of this paper is to highlight the importance of the concept of choice. To do so, a synopsis of the most important contributions to this topic—featuring an eclectic set of scholars across disciplines—is provided. As central to the argument, John von Neumann’s contributions, game theory and simulation techniques on von Neumann machines, are identified. Innovation (economic and theoretic) as the driving force behind human evolution seems to head for a new scientific paradigm based on von Neumann’s ideas.

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Notes

  1. See (Descartes 1990 (1637)).

  2. See Spinoza (1982 (1677)).

  3. See Gilbert (1993) and McFadden (2000).

  4. See Defoe (1719).

  5. See Rousseau (1762).

  6. See Smith (1776).

  7. See Malthus (1803).

  8. See Marx (1969).

  9. Compare Schumpeter (1911).

  10. See (Gould 2002, pp.1339–1343).

  11. See (Smith 1982).

  12. See (Darwin 1859).

  13. See (Boltzmann 2000).

  14. See Maxwell (1860).

  15. See Sclar (1993, pp. 28–48).

  16. See Hanappi (2003a, b).

  17. See (Farjoun and Machover 1983).

  18. See (Smith and Foley 2002).

  19. See Keynes (1973 (1921)).

  20. Compare Knight (1933 (1921)).

  21. See (Ramsey 1931 (1926)).

  22. Compare (Mirowski 2002, pp. 94–152).

  23. Compare Neumann and Morgenstern (1944).

  24. Compare (Selten 2001)).

  25. Compare the theory of minority games (Coolen 2005).

  26. Compare (Fudenberg and Levine 1998, 2007) and (Roemer 1981, 2006).

  27. For an alternative see (Simon 1956).

  28. Compare for example Roughgarden et al. (2007).

  29. In an influential article Larry Samuelson (2002) writes that ‘evolutionary game theory thus provides little reason to believe that equilibrium behavior should characterize all games in all circumstances.’

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  1. Economics, University of Technology of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Hardy Hanappi

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Hanappi, H. The concept of choice: why and how innovative behaviour is not just stochastic. J Evol Econ 18, 275–289 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-007-0086-0

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