The paper unravels the subversive nature of Schumpeter’s proposition that entrepreneurs carry out innovations (the micro level), that swarms of followers imitate them (meso) and that, as a consequence, 'creative destruction’ leads to economic development 'from within’...

This article reviews the most important transfers of this kind into evolutionary economics. It broadly differentiates between approaches that draw on an analogy construction to the biological sphere, those that make metaphorical use of Darwinian ideas, and avenues that are based on the fact that...

A characteristic feature of economic development is the ever changing structure of consumption patterns. Reducing the explanation of this phenomenon to changing prices, finally caused by changes in the availability of goods (or characteristics), would neglect a major force driving this change,...

Phenomena like meat sharing in hunter-gatherers, altruistic self-sacrifice in intergroup conflicts, and contribution to the production of public goods in laboratory experiments have led to the development of numerous theories trying to explain human prosocial preferences and behavior. Many of...

This paper delivers some findings from the present-day cognitive sciences on man’s cognitive dispositions that support aspects of Veblen’s "nstinct of workmanship," which is an essential starting point of his evolutionary theory of institutional change. These cognitive dispositions partly...

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can...

In pursuing profit opportunities, entrepreneurs often use multi-person firms. Since employment contracts leave some discretion to the employees, organizational coherence requires that they are coordinated on the entrepreneurial business conception as their own frame of action. Accordingly, the...

„Welfare“ and „wealth“ are discussed as central economic notions in the context of the history of economic thought. One focus is laid on the limits to economic growth discussed already by 18th century Physiocrats and in the 19th century especially by John Stuart Mill and W. Stanley...

Although decision makers are often reported to have difficulties in making comparisons between multi-dimensional decision outcomes, economic theory assumes a uni-dimensional utility measure. This paper reviews evidence from behavioral and brain sciences to assess whether, and for what reasons,...