Abstract
This essay is in two parts. The first considers the evolution of evolutionary economics from 1982 to 2012. While enormous advances are acknowledged, it is argued that the field is in danger of fragmentation and that there has been relatively little development in its over-arching theoretical framework since Nelson and Winter (1982). This sets the scene for a 2011 workshop and four of the papers presented at the event. In the second part, each paper is outlined in turn, both in terms of its specific contribution and any light it may shine on the problems raised in the first part.
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Notes
The authors warmly thank Howard Aldrich, Thorbjørn Knudsen and anonymous referees for very helpful comments on earlier drafts.
The existence of detailed differences between the evolutionary mechanisms in the two domains is a reason why the search for an over-arching metaphor does not necessarily amount to the application of more specific analogies. Analogies require a closer correspondence than metaphor. It also has to be noted that there are huge differences in the mechanisms of variety-creation, replication and selection even within the biological domain.
The modern wave of ‘evolutionary’ thinking has had a major impact on business-related research. The widening of the focus of research to additional disciplines (such as politics and history) would have limited the ability to study the structure of the field effectively. Increased heterogeneity would have made the identification of different research streams trickier. Also the employed software restricted the number of articles and the number of cited pieces of work. The 350,000 potential citation objects brought the study close to the current performance limits of the software.
Draft papers were also presented by Eric Beinhocker, David Sloan Wilson and Ulrich Witt. But because of the pressure of other commitments they were unable to submit a finished and original paper for this journal symposium.
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Dollimore, D.E., Hodgson, G.M. Four essays on economic evolution: an introduction. J Evol Econ 24, 1–10 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-013-0315-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-013-0315-7