Strong growth in disposable income has driven, and is still driving, consumption to unprecedented,but not sustainable levels. To explain the dynamic interplay of needs, need satisfaction, andinnovation underlying that growth a behavioral theory of consumption is suggested and discussedwith...

An evolutionary perspective on economic behavior has to account for the influences that thehuman genetic endowment has on the choices the agents make. Likely to have been fixed intimes of fierce selection pressure, this endowment is presumably adapted to the livingconditions of early humans. If...

It has been suggested that, by generalizing Darwinian principles, a common foundation can bederived for all scientific disciplines dealing with evolutionary processes, especially forevolutionary economics. In this paper we show, however, that the principles of such a“Generalized Darwinism”...

Normative reasoning in welfare economics and social contract theory usually presumesinvariable, context-independent individual preferences. Following recent work particularlyin behavioral economics this assumption is difficult to defend. This paper therefore exploreswhat can be said about...

New knowledge with potential commercial value is created, replicated, and transferred in adistributed manner. The highly systemic nature of knowledge production and the need for anyknowledge to be individually acquired and expressed in order to produce an effect, jointlyconstrain the dynamics of...

The emergence of novelty is a driving agent for economic change. New technologies, new productsand services, new institutional arrangements, to mention a few examples, are the backbone ofdevelopment and growth. Important though it is, the emergence of novelty is not well understood.What seems to...

Twentieth century demand theory is an outgrowth of the revision of the utilitarian program undertakenby Jevons (1879) in the so-called marginalist revolution. In the original, Benthamite version, theutilitarian program was based on a naturalistic, hedonic theory of behavior. Utility was...