April 26, 2005
The Jones Center of the Wharton School has posted an informative working paper by Sid Winter. In Developoing an Evolutionary Theory for Economics and Management Winter provides an illmuninating discussion of the intellectual origins and problems encountered in his quest to develop an evolutionary theory for economic phenoma. He also articulates his vision of the tasks that lie ahead.
December 31, 2004
Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions
Johann Peter Murmann compares the development of the synthetic dye industry in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States through the lenses of evolutionary theory. As Murmann demonstrates, a complex coevolutionary process linking firms, technology, and national institutions resulted in very different degrees of industrial success among the dye firms in the three countries. The book won Joseph Schumpter Prize and the Stanley Reiter in 2004. Download Introductory ChapterDecember 28, 2004
The Evolving Economy
This volume contains 20 of Ulrich Witt's essays on evolutionary economics written between 1985 and 2001. Some of the issues he addresses include the biological foundations of economic behavior, the dissemination of new industrial technologies under network externalities, and the application of the theory of self-organization to the study of change in the marketplace.December 12, 2004
Environmental History: Prospectus for a New Field. Edmund Russel has written an interesting essay, calling for an evolutionary view of environmental history.
September 26, 2004
Debate on Larmarckism in Social Evolution
In June 2004, Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjorn Knudsen circulated a paper under a title of The Limits of Larmarckism Revisited. What followed was a very interesting debate provoked by a response from Richard Nelson. Geoffrey Hodgson, Thorbjorn Knudsen, John van Wyhe, Marion Blute, John Gowdy, and David Hull all participated in this high quality debate that took place within a few days. Anyone interested in evolutionary thought in the social sciences will profit from reading this exchange. Comments on the debate are welcome. (The Hodgson and Knudsen paper is now published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. Download here.)September 17, 2004
Important New Evidence on Language Development. Science magazine (Vol. 305, pp. 1779-1782) published the analysis of an amazing natural experiment in Nicaragua where deaf children created a new sign language.
September 15, 2004
Stanley Metcalfy has composed a wonderful review essay of John Ziman’s Technological Innnovation as an Evolutionary Process. Read it here.
August 2004
Timur Kuran has written a fascinating paper on Why the Middle East is economically underdeveloped. Anyone interested in social evolution will find this timely paper worth reading. Download Paper
July 2004
Geoffrey Hodgson has published a new book, The Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure and Darwinism in American Institutionalism.You can read here the review published on EH.Net.
June 2004
A Workshop on Adaptation vs. Selection in Industrial Change will take place at the Academy of Management Meeting in New Orleans, August 7, 2004.
October 2003
The abstracts of a new working papers on industrial evolution by Giovanni Gavetti and Johann Peter Murmann are posted.
New Book
An Evolutionary Approach to Social Welfare by Christian Satorius
From the Publisher: A person finds a lost purse with a lot of money in it. Ought she try to return it to its owner or keep it herself? And even more interestingly, what will she actually do? According to standard economic theory, a rational person is supposed to maximize her utility and, at least when unobserved, keep the purse for herself.
April 2003
PBS has produced a spectacular film showing how recent advances in genetic analyses are rewriting the history of human beings. See the PBS website for a schedule of The Journey of Man. The film is also available on video, and Princeton University Press has published a compendium book: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey.
February 2003
Robert Aunger has published a new book in which he spells out his theory of memes. You can read the introduction and the first chapter of his “Electric Meme” here
November 2002
Following in the tradition of Karl Popper and David Hull, Marion Blute has written a very interesting paper on the development of science as an evolutionary process. You can read the article The Evolutionary Ecology of Science online at the Journal of Memetics.
September 2002
A Workshop on Cognitions and Capabilities is taking place at Harvard. Click here for details.
July 2002
Darwinism in Economics: from Analogy to Ontology. Geoffrey Hodgson has written an important paper that addresses the criticisms that have been marshaled against the application of evolutionary explanations in the social sciences. Hodgson highlights that Darwinism includes a broad theoretical framework for the analysis of the evolution of all open, complex systems, and involves a basic philosophical commitment to detailed, cumulative, causal explanations. You can download this new paper here
May 2002
A workshop on “Empirical research on routines in business and economics: Towards a research program” will be held on the November 3-4 in Odense, Denmark. Click here for a call for papers.
April 2002
The Fourth International Workshop on Institutional Economics will be held on the July 3 and 5 at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Click here for details.
March 2002
A roundtable on “Resources, Routines and Industrial Dynamics in the Experimentally Organized Economy” will be held on the October 24 and 25 in Hirtshals, Denmark. Click here for details. The first English translation of the seventh chapter of Schumpeter’s 1912 classic “Theory of Economic Evolution” will appear in a special issue on Industry and Innovation. Click here for a table of contents.
February 2002
Jack Vromen reviews Jason Pott’s The New Evolutionary Microeconomics: Complexity, Competence and Adaptive Behaviour in the Journal of Memetics.
January 22, 2002
Dawinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science
Howard E. Aldrich reviews (January 21, 2002) for etss.net a new book about the meme concept edited by Robert Aunger. Aunger brought together both supporters and opponents of meme theory (Susan Blackmore, Maurice Bloch, Robert Boyd, Rosaria Conte, David L Hull, Adam Kuper, Kevin Leland, John Odling-Smee, Henry Plotkin, Peter J. Richerson, Dan Sperber) to debate the validity of a concept regarded by many as scientifically suspect. Click here for a table of contents. Share your thoughts on the book or the review by posting a message at the end of the reviews.December 2001
A volume “Evolution of Cultural Entities” edited by Wheeler, Ziman and Boden is in preparation. Click here for a tentative table of contents and e-mail addresses of editors.
December 2001
Strategy is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company’s Future by Robert A. Burgelman with a Foreword by Andrew S. Grove
From the Publisher: This sophisticated book, written for executives at established companies and business school scholars, places two mutually antagonistic concepts—strategy (which posits an open-ended, yet-to-be-determined future) and destiny (the belief in an inevitable end)—into a relationship. Author Robert Burgelman, a professor at Stanford University, begins with look at strategy—what it is, how it evolves, becoming inertial and destinal or adaptive and transformative—using Intel as a model. He then proceeds with an advanced discussion of strategy that is fascinating, challenging, and well worth reading; although this book isn’t right for the casual reader, it is certain to be appreciated by its intended audience.
Editor
Advisory Board
- Howard Aldrich (North Carolina)
- Glenn Carroll (Stanford)
- Giovanni Dosi (Pisa)
- Steven Klepper † (CMU)
- Joel Mokyr (Northwestern)
- Richard Nelson (Columbia)
- Peter Richerson (UC Davis)
- Michael Tushman (Harvard)
- Walter Vincenti † (Stanford)
- Sidney Winter (Pennsylvania)
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