The paper discusses some fundamental features of the 'Simonian' research program in microeconomics and compare them with two streams of thought which find their roots into Simon's pathbreaking work since the '50s and '60s, namely Transaction Cost Economics and Evolutionary Economics. One argues...

In contrast to the usual approach taken in the literature, in which an Industry Life Cycle (ILC) is reproduced by aggregate functions, the model of this paper generates a self-organizing ILC. A general evolutionary agent-based simulation model is developed that can be adapted for specific...

This discussion paper has resulted in a chapter in: (R.U. Ayres, D. Simpson, and M. Toman (eds.)), Scarcity and Growth in the Millennium, 2005, Resources for the Future, Washington DC, 177-97.

The tremendous development of an easy access to computational power within the last 30 years has led to the widespread use of numerical approaches in almost all scientific disciplines. The first generation of simulation models was rather focused on stylized empirical phenomena. With agent-based...

This paper reviews the emergence and evolution of major topics in economics of innovation. Throughout the paper, particular attention is devoted to the analysis of the cumulative aspects and complementarities between di_erent paths of research over time. Moreover, this survey highlights the...

This paper discusses the role of so-called national champions within the context of the EU's ambitious goal to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic region in the world by 2010. We find football to be a useful analogy in our discussion of national champions. There are...

The EU competition policy in regard to vertical restraints is mainly based upon neoclassical efficiency-oriented reasonings, leading to a neglect of the innovation dimension. This paper analyses to what extent evolutionary theories of competition and innovation economics can be used to derive...

The purpose of this article is to analyse the way economists interested in social and economic evolution cite, mention or refer to Darwin. We focus on the attitude of economists towards Darwin's theory of social evolution - an issue he considered as central to his theory. We show that economists...

To explain emergent cultural phenomena, this paper argues, it is inevitable to understand the evolution of complex human cognitive adaptations and their links to the population-level dynamics of cultural variation. On the one hand, the process of cultural transmission is influenced and...

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,...