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Redefining Evolutionary Economics

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to redefine evolutionary economics in view of its negative and positive identities. The negative identity is formed as a counterargument to neoclassical economics with the hypotheses of optimizing agents and equilibrium, and this functions as a ‘vision’ that leads to the positive identity. According to the vision, the market is not a universally designed or constructed system, but an autopoietic system or a spontaneous order. In order to specify the positive identity, we examine the ontological/epistemological double meanings of evolutionary economics that entail a recursive relation between economy and economics. Evolutionary economics is redefined as the economics of a large-scale, complex and uncertain economy that exists as a loosely connected system with a micro-macro loop structure, facilitated by such social institutions as rules or conventions, multi-layered buffers and routines. It also means the ‘analogical-evolutionary pluralist’ approach within economics as well as meta-economics in terms of the relationship between economics and history of economics or other disciplines of science.

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Correspondence to Makoto Nishibe.

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Nishibe, M. Redefining Evolutionary Economics. Evolut Inst Econ Rev 3, 3–25 (2006). https://doi.org/10.14441/eier.3.3

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