This paper pursues a research agenda inspired by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter’s Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982). This seminal work applied the Darwinian concepts of variation, replication and selection to the evolution of firms. It proposed a level of evolution, replication...

1871 saw the publication of two major treatises in economics, with self-seeking economic man at their center. In the same year Darwin published The Descent of Man, which emphasized sympathy and cooperation as well as self-interest, and contained a powerful argument that morality has evolved in...