The evolution of macrogenerations

Abstract.

To develop the ideas of evolutionists – followers of Schumpeterian tradition, an attempt is made in the paper to describe the economy at large as a set of specific subsystems, namely macrogenerations. Those subsystems possess the following features: first, each macrogeneration is born, lives and eventually dies like a living creature; second, each macrogeneration produces a part of the GNP and the totality of simultaneously living macrogenerations produces the whole GNP. Correspondingly, the dynamics of the sum of the products of all macrogenerations is identical to that of the GNP. The economic meaning of the concept of macrogeneration is elucidated, and a model is constructed that imitates the behavior of macrogenerations. Using this model (on the basis of the information about the behavior of the GNP of the USA during the period of 1870–1994) a representation of the American economy is obtained as a system consisting of the set of macrogenerations.