Themes in Evolutionary Economics

Abstract

In the setting of modern economics, Marshall’s economic biology Mecca is most obviously situated within evolutionary economics. In this chapter, some very general themes in evolutionary economics are discussed; themes which would no doubt have been of interest to Marshall if he had been embarked on a journey towards his selected Mecca during more recent times.¹ The arrival of modern evolutionary theory is often associated with the 1982 publication of Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter’s An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change; however, the application of evolutionary thinking to economic analysis has a long history, with the work of two acclaimed pioneers, Thorstein Veblen and Joseph Schumpeter, acknowledged in this chapter.² Marshall’s less widely recognised credentials as a pioneering evolutionary economist are reconfirmed in the chapter that follows.