Yoshinori Shiozawa – författare

This book provides for the first time the microfoundations of evolutionary economics, enabling the reader to grasp a new framework for economic analysis that is compatible with evolutionary processes. Any independent approach to economics must include a value theory (or price theory) and price and quantity adjustment processes. Evolutionary economics has rightly and successfully concentrated its efforts on explaining evolutionary processes in technology and institutions. However, it does not have its own value theory and is not capable of explaining the workings of everyday economics processes, in which any evolutionary process would take place.

Our point of departure is the addition of myopic agents with severely limited rational and forecasting capacities (in stark contrast to mainstream economics). We show how myopic agents, in a complex world, can produce a stable price system and demonstrate how they can adjust their production to changing demand flows. Agents behave without any knowledge of the overall process, and they generate a stable economy as large as the global network of exchanges. This is the true “miracle” of the market mechanism. In contrast to mainstream general equilibrium theory, this miracle can be explained without the need for an auctioneer or infinitely rational agents. Thanks to this book, evolutionary economics can now claim to be an independent approach to economics that can completely replace mainstream neoclassical economics.

Economics went through great development in the 20th century. This development, which was based mainly on mathematical methods, is not an appropriate method of analyzing markets that change every hour and every day. In a stock market, prices constantly change depending on speculation. U-Mart, a manmade market, has been proposed in order to study such instantly moving markets. Although the U-Mart system is internationally acclaimed for being at the forefront of market research, its use is by no means limited to a small number of researchers on the fringe. The whole system, including its source code, is open and is distributed without charge, testifying to a philosophy of creating and providing a common test bed for research into financial markets.

This is the first book published in English on the new international value theory, presented by Yoshinori Shiozawa in 2007. Shiozawa submitted a solution to the question on international values since Ricardo by constructing a Ricardo–Sraffa model on trading economies with M countries and N commodities including intermediate inputs (normally M < N). The new theory is based on the assumption that prices are determined by production costs, which is the property derived from the classical value theory. The papers collected here deal with the following: introducing readers to the new theory; presenting diagrammatic illustrations of the new theory; analysing efficient patterns of specialization allowing intermediate inputs; examining how the new theory gives a new horizon to the Neo-Ricardian trade theory; investigating competitiveness, the long-period method, and potentiality from the perspectives of the new theory; discussing Mill''s conversion toward neoclassical revolution; scrutinizing how the concept of comparative advantage has developed and diverged from Ricardo’s trade theory; discussing the purification of Marshall''s value theory through Mill’s influence; reviewing the controversies on international values among Japanese economists; considering the value-added trade based on the Ricardian value theory; and lastly giving a mathematical explanation of the definitions and theorems of the new theory.

This edited volume celebrates  a quarter-century’s anniversary of the foundation of the Japan Association for Evolutionary Economics (JAFEE) and proposes the future perspectives of evolutionary economics on the grounds of its achievements in Japan. When JAFEE was founded in 1997, hundreds of ambitious non-neo-classical economists gathered in this forum to advance new directions of economic research. Succeeding in 2004, JAFEE launched an international academic journal, Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review (EIER), which is now published by Springer.Evolutionary economics found rich soil for growth in Japan, where non-orthodox directions in economic theory and historical interest in the past masters’ works occupied a solid portion of economics academism. Evolutionary economics in Japan has grown with the collaboration of non-neoclassical economics including Marxian and post-Keynesian economics, agent-based modeling, complexity studies, comparative economic systems, and studies in industrial evolution. Combining the renovation of classical value theory as the micro-foundation of evolutionary economics is one of its most conspicuous achievements. Experimental methods are also used in the artificial domain, regional studies (community currencies), and other domains. Further, evolutionary ideas stimulated comparative analysis of national economies in the development and system transition. 

The variety of chapters in this volume reflects the broad perspective and the multiplicity of approaches to evolutionary economics in Japan, which thus stimulates its worldwide advance.