For non-economists, it is often difficult to understand why economists place so much emphasis on the self-interest motive. It is obvious that people act out of a variety of motives - gratitude, anger, social obligation and many, many other motives. There are several reasons why economists still...

Thorstein Veblen, a founder of original or old institutional economics, combined social and evolutionary thought in his institutionalist approach to dealing with psychological, social, and economic issues. The psychological content of Veblen's writings takes instinct and habits into...

There are several ways to incorporate evolutionary concepts into economic thinking. 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...

The new institutional economics has one of its roots in evolutionary thinking. The idea is that there is competition among organizational forms. Some forms spread faster than others and thereby displace and eventually destroy the less well adapted forms. In the end, the most 'efficient'...

Institutions affect economic outcomes, but variation in them cannot be directly linked to environmental factors such as geography, climate, or technological availabilities. Game theoretic approaches, based as they typically are on foraging only assumptions, don't provide an adequate foundation...

In this conceptual paper, we discuss the evolutionary root causes of institutional complexity, defined as inherently incompatible prescriptions when different sources of institutions intersect at the same space and time. We suggest that societies are not delineated by clear-cut boundaries, but...