An evolutionary perspective on economic behavior has to account for the influences that thehuman genetic endowment has on the choices the agents make. Likely to have been fixed intimes of fierce selection pressure, this endowment is presumably adapted to the livingconditions of early humans. If...

It has been suggested that, by generalizing Darwinian principles, a common foundation can bederived for all scientific disciplines dealing with evolutionary processes, especially forevolutionary economics. In this paper we show, however, that the principles of such a“Generalized Darwinism”...

Epistemic arguments play a significant role in Hayek’s defense of market liberalism. Hisclaim that market competition is a discovery procedure that serves the common good is acase in point. The hypothesis of the markets’ efficient use of existing knowledge issupplemented by the idea that...

Strong growth in disposable income has driven, and is still driving, consumption to unprecedented,but not sustainable levels. To explain the dynamic interplay of needs, need satisfaction, andinnovation underlying that growth a behavioral theory of consumption is suggested and discussedwith...

This paper incorporates aspects of humans’ evolved cognition into a formal model of culturalevolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how thebiased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influencesagents’...

The purpose of this article is to analyse the way economists interested in social andeconomic evolution cite, mention or refer to Darwin. We focus on the attitude ofeconomists towards Darwin’s theory of social evolution – an issue he considered ascentral to his theory. We show that...

According to the principle of Normative Individualism, the evaluation of economicstates and processes should be guided exclusively by the wishes of the individuals whoare seen as the only bearer of values. Despite its intuitive appeal and its almost universalacceptance in normative economics...

According to the advocates of a “Generalized Darwinism” (GD), the three coreDarwinian principles of variation, selection and retention (or inheritance) can be used as ageneral framework for the development of theories explaining evolutionary processes inthe socioeconomic domain. Even though...

This paper proposes to identify the micro-level sources for the dy-namic increasing returns occurring at an aggregate level. The paperreverts to a micro model of technological change in-line with the evolu-tionary literature on industrial dynamics. The data generated throughnumerical simulations...