Evolving Economy

Ulrich Witt, Director Emeritus of the Evolutionary Economics Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany and Adjunct Professor, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia

'This is a genuine tour de force and what must be acknowledged by anyone who has followed the evolution of evolutionary economics since the early 1980s is the original, pioneering nature of these essays and the ideas they contain. . . These essays are a pleasure to read and to reflect on at leisure. Many, like this reviewer, will recognise that Ulrich Witt has followed the path of novelty in these essays and that in relation to much of our present understanding of evolutionary economics he has exercised enterprise and leadership. . . The best acknowledgement that we can give Witt's enterprise is to continue to follow along the path marked out by these essays and extend the evolutionary perspective into new channels of economic and social experience.'

• Contents: Preface Part I: Introduction 1. Evolutionary Economics and the Extension of Evolution to the Economy Part II: Evolutionary Concepts and Methodology 2. Emergence and Dissemination of Innovation: Some Principles of Evolutionary Economics 3. Evolutionary Concepts in Economics 4. Coordination of Individual Economic Activities as an Evolving Process of Self-Organization 5. Firms’ Market Behavior Under Imperfect Information and Economic Natural Selection 6. “Lock-in” vs. “Critical Masses” – Industrial Change Under Network Externalities Part III: The Darwinian Perspective and the Continuity Hypothesis 7. Bioeconomics as Economics from a Darwinian Perspective 8. Economics, Sociobiology, and Behavioral Psychology on Preferences9. Economic Behavior and Biological Evolution: Some Remarks on the Sociobiology Debate 10. Self-Organization and Economics – What is New? Part IV: Evolution in the Context of New Institutional Economics and Public Choice 11. The Evolution of Economic Institutions as a Propagation Process 12. The Endogenous Public Choice Theorist 13. Multiple Equilibria, Critical Masses, and Institutional Change. The Coup d’état Problem 14. Evolution and Stability of Cooperation Without Enforceable Contracts 15. Between Appeasement and Belligerent Moralism: The Evolution of Moral Conduct in International Politics 16. Innovations, Externalities and the Problem of Economic Progress Part V: The Evolutionary Approach and the Austrian School of Economics 17. Subjectivism in Economics – A Suggested Reorientation 18. Endogenous Change – Causes and Contingencies 19. Turning Austrian Economics into an Evolutionary Theory 20. Do Entrepreneurs Need Firms? A Contribution to a Missing Chapter in Austrian Economics Index