In economics, the market has been understood to steer behavior towards a competitive equilibrium in which all economic actors behave optimally, and in which welfare of society is maximized. Yet many economists have also seen shortcomings to this ideal picture of the market in the form of limited...

"Economics and Biology" is a collection of key essays on the relationship between economics and biology. As the limitations of the mechanistic metaphor in economics are increasingly recognized, this volume explores the potential for the use of evolutionary and other ideas from the science of...