This paper incorporates aspects of humans’ evolved cognition into a formal model of culturalevolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how thebiased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influencesagents’...

This paper is a follow-up on two earlier debates I was part of. One debate is documentedin a special issue of The Journal of Economic Methodology, edited by Matthias Klaes andcalled Symposium: Ontological Issues in Evolutionary Economics (2004) The other oneis reported in a special issue of The...

We apply a panel vector autoregression model to a firm-level longitudinal databaseto observe the co-evolution of sales growth, employment growth, profits growth andgrowth of R&D expenditure. Contrary to expectations, profit growth seems to havelittle detectable effect on R&D investment. Instead,...

Recent advances in the economics of knowledge highlight the key role ofpecuniary knowledge externalities in explaining the system dynamics oftotal factor productivity growth. When non-exhaustible technologicalknowledge is an input both in the production of new goods and of furtherknowledge, and...

Amartya Sen has advanced a number of distinct arguments against utilitarianism and‘utility’-based views more generally. One of these invokes various ways in whichunderdogs can ‘adapt’ and learn to live with their situations. Sen’s argument is related toJon Elster’s discussion 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...

This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population viaprocesses of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favorenvironmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission ofdifferent behaviors via...

The issue of technological unemployment receives perennial popular attention. Althoughthere are previous empirical investigations that have focused on the relationship between innovationand employment, the originality of our approach lies in our choice of method. We focus onfour 2-digit...

Until a few generations ago, humans made their living by foraging, like other animals.We have therefore inherited genes that allowed our ancestors to thrive as hunters andgatherers. Thriving in a modern economy requires very different behaviours but wecope because the human brain evolved to be...

We survey the phenomenon of the growth of firms drawing on literature from economics,management, and sociology. We begin with a review of empirical ‘stylised facts’before discussing theoretical contributions. Firm growth is characterized by a predominantstochastic element, making it...