Institutions In An Evolutionary Theory Of Economic Growth
The question of how institutions fit into a theory of economic growth of course depends not only on what one means by institutions, but also on the other aspects of that theory. I suggest that the concept of institutions as social technologies fits into evolutionary theories of economic growth very nicely. Technological Advance as the Driving Force While these days almost all scholars studying economic growth see technological advance as a large part of the story, it seems fair to say that...
Social Technologies And Institutions
In an earlier paper where Bhaven Sampat and I developed many of these notions, we proposed that, if one reflects on the matter, the programme built into a routine generally involves two different aspects a recipe that is anonymous regarding any division of labour, and a division of labour plus a mode of coordination. We proposed that the former is what scholars often have in mind when they think of 'physical technologies'. The latter we called a 'social technology', and we proposed that social...
Institutional Analysis And Evolutionary Economic Theory The Historical
I want to begin my argument by proposing that, before modern neoclassical theory gained its present preponderant position in economics, much of economic analysis was both evolutionary and institutional. Thus Adam Smith's analysis was concerned with how 'the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market' and, in particular, his famous pinmaking example, certainly fits the mould of what I would call evolutionary theorizing about economic change. Indeed, his analysis is very much one...
Routines As A Unifying Concept
For this readership I do not need to present an elaborate argument that 'routines', or an equivalent concept, play a central role in modern economic evolutionary theory. As Winter and I have developed the concept, the carrying out of a routine is 'programmatic' in nature and, like a programme, tends largely to be carried out automatically. Like a computer program, our routine concept admits choice within a limited range of alternatives, but channelled choice. Thus the routines built into a...
Asymmetry and Meta Complexity
We wish to show how non-separability provides an argument in favour of generalizing complexity as a mode of knowing. Yet this is not the sole argument. There exist several others. We consider these first and will come back to the non-separability argument at the end. Generalizing is related to asymmetry. The reason is that it is possible to model complexity and non-complexity with a complex model, whereas it is not possible to model complexity with a non-complex model. In the latter case, only...
References
Dosi, G. et al. 1988 , Technical Change and Economic Theory, London Pinter. Edquist, C. 1996 , Systems of Innovation, London Pinter. Foster, J. 1993 , 'Economics and the self-organization approach Alfred Marshall revisited', Economic Journal, 103, 975-91. Foster, J. 1997 , 'The analytical foundations of evolutionary economics from biological analogy to economic self-organisation', Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 8, 427-51. Foster, J. 2000 , 'Competitive selection, self-organisation and...
Positive Feedback And Restless Capitalism
The reader will have noted already an 'Austrian' undercurrent to the discussion thus far. The division of labour in knowledge production maps readily into the Hayekian emphasis on the distributed, localized, idiosyncractic, personal nature of knowledge. Equally, it emphasizes the complementarity between the highly disaggregated, dispersed nature of uncoordinated plans to innovate and the order-imposing nature of market processes that resolve differential innovative behaviour into patterns of...