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The Grip of History and the Scope for Novelty: Some Results and Open Questions on Path Dependence in Economic Processes

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Abstract

The very notion of multiple paths of socio-economic change ultimately rests on the idea that history is an essential part of the interpretation of most socio-economic phenomena one observes at any time and place. The prop erty that history matters is also intimately related to that of time irreversibility. In the socio-economic domain and in many areas of natural sciences as well, one cannot reverse the arrow of time — even in principle, let alone in practice — and still recover invariant properties of the system under investigation. That is, in a caricature, you may get a lot of steaks out of a cow but you cannot get a cow out of a lot of steaks.

This work is part of an ongoing research project involving from the start Andrea Bassanini. Support by the Sant’Anna School and by the Center for Development Research (7.F.F), Bonn is gratefully acknowledged. We also wish to thank comments by Giulio Bottazzi, Uwe Cantner, Ping Chen, Paul David and Willi Semmler.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ECIS, Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Carolina Castaldi

  2. LEM, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

    Carolina Castaldi & Giovanni Dosi

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  1. Carolina Castaldi
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  1. Department of Sociology, UCLA, USA

    Andreas Wimmer (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Münster, Germany

    Reinhart Kössler (Adjunct Professor) (Adjunct Professor)

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© 2006 Carolina Castaldi and Giovanni Dosi

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Castaldi, C., Dosi, G. (2006). The Grip of History and the Scope for Novelty: Some Results and Open Questions on Path Dependence in Economic Processes. In: Wimmer, A., Kössler, R. (eds) Understanding Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524644_8

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