An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change PDF Download

Author: Richard R. Nelson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674041431
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Author: American Mathematical Society. Short Course
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821853260
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
This volume is based on lectures delivered at the 2011 AMS Short Course on Evolutionary Game Dynamics, held January 4-5, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Evolutionary game theory studies basic types of social interactions in populations of players. It combines the strategic viewpoint of classical game theory (independent rational players trying to outguess each other) with population dynamics (successful strategies increase their frequencies). A substantial part of the appeal of evolutionary game theory comes from its highly diverse applications such as social dilemmas, the evolution of language, or mating behaviour in animals. Moreover, its methods are becoming increasingly popular in computer science, engineering, and control theory. They help to design and control multi-agent systems, often with a large number of agents (for instance, when routing drivers over highway networks or data packets over the Internet). While these fields have traditionally used a top down approach by directly controlling the behaviour of each agent in the system, attention has recently turned to an indirect approach allowing the agents to function independently while providing incentives that lead them to behave in the desired way. Instead of the traditional assumption of equilibrium behaviour, researchers opt increasingly for the evolutionary paradigm and consider the dynamics of behaviour in populations of agents employing simple, myopic decision rules.

Author: Graham Kendall
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812770682
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In 1984, Robert Axelrod published a book, relating the story of two competitions which he ran, where invited academics entered strategies for the Iterated PrisonersOCO Dilemma. The book, almost 20 years on, is still widely read and cited by academics and the general public. As a celebration of that landmark work, we have recreated those competitions to celebrate its 20th anniversary, by again inviting academics to submit prisonersOCO dilemma strategies. The first of these new competitions was run in July 2004, and the second in April 2005. Iterated PrisonersOCO Dilemma: 20 Years On essentially provides an update of the AxelrodOCOs book. Specifically, it. OCo Presents the prisonersOCO dilemma, its history and variants. OCo Highlights original Axelrod's work and its impact. OCo Discusses results of new competitions. OCo Showcases selected papers that reflect the latest researches in the area."

Author: Yochai Benkler
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300125771
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing. The author shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront.

Author: Martin J. Osborne
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 180511123X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Models in Microeconomic Theory covers basic models in current microeconomic theory. Part I (Chapters 1-7) presents models of an economic agent, discussing abstract models of preferences, choice, and decision making under uncertainty, before turning to models of the consumer, the producer, and monopoly. Part II (Chapters 8-14) introduces the concept of equilibrium, beginning, unconventionally, with the models of the jungle and an economy with indivisible goods, and continuing with models of an exchange economy, equilibrium with rational expectations, and an economy with asymmetric information. Part III (Chapters 15-16) provides an introduction to game theory, covering strategic and extensive games and the concepts of Nash equilibrium and subgame perfect equilibrium. Part IV (Chapters 17-20) gives a taste of the topics of mechanism design, matching, the axiomatic analysis of economic systems, and social choice. The book focuses on the concepts of model and equilibrium. It states models and results precisely, and provides proofs for all results. It uses only elementary mathematics (with almost no calculus), although many of the proofs involve sustained logical arguments. It includes about 150 exercises. With its formal but accessible style, this textbook is designed for undergraduate students of microeconomics at intermediate and advanced levels.

Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540620
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
“A superb new understanding of the dynamic economy as a learning society, one that goes well beyond the usual treatment of education, training, and R&D.”—Robert Kuttner, author of The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy Since its publication Creating a Learning Society has served as an effective tool for those who advocate government policies to advance science and technology. It shows persuasively how enormous increases in our standard of living have been the result of learning how to learn, and it explains how advanced and developing countries alike can model a new learning economy on this example. Creating a Learning Society: Reader’s Edition uses accessible language to focus on the work’s central message and policy prescriptions. As the book makes clear, creating a learning society requires good governmental policy in trade, industry, intellectual property, and other important areas. The text’s central thesis—that every policy affects learning—is critical for governments unaware of the innovative ways they can propel their economies forward. “Profound and dazzling. In their new book, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald study the human wish to learn and our ability to learn and so uncover the processes that relate the institutions we devise and the accompanying processes that drive the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge . . . This is social science at its best.”—Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge “An impressive tour de force, from the theory of the firm all the way to long-term development, guided by the focus on knowledge and learning . . . This is an ambitious book with far-reaching policy implications.”—Giovanni Dosi, director, Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna “[A] sweeping work of macroeconomic theory.”—Harvard Business Review

Author: Leslie Neubecker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540295577
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Dynamic oligopolistic competition has implications both for the strategic management of firms and for the design of an effective competition policy. Consequently, the present book considers the issue from a private and social perspective. It discusses the potential pro- and anticollusive effects of long-term business strategies, especially for cooperation and reinvestment in production, financing and management compensation, in markets with fluctuating demand. The method of supergame theory is applied to integrate long-run decisions and different types of demand into the analysis. Aside from its contributions to the theoretical literature, the book provides valuable insights into the design of competition policy. The observed development of prices is an indicator of the extent of collusion in the market and can thereby be used to assess antitrust regulation in certain business areas, and to focus the resources of competition authorities on markets where conditions are conducive to collusion.

Author: Shoshana Zuboff
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395700
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 683

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Book Description
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

Author: P. B. Paulus
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461255783
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Research on groups has been a major focus of concern among psychologists and sociologists for many years. The study of groups certainly deserves a central role in these disciplines since much of our behavior occurs in groups and many important social phenomena involve groups. Issues such as leadership, conformity, group decision-making, group task performance, and coalition formation have had a long history of research. However, recently a number of other areas of research have blossomed that provide interesting new perspectives on group processes (e.g., social impact). In addition, topics of research have developed outside the commonly ac cepted domain of group dynamics (e.g., self-disclosure) which seem to be concerned with rather basic group processes. Basic Group Processes was designed to bring together in one volume a repre sentative sample of the broad range of work currently being done in the area of groups. Some of the chapters provide a review of the literature while others focus more specifically on current programs of research. All, however, provide new insights into basic group processes and a number provide broad integrative schemes. All of the authors were asked to emphasize theoretical issues rather than a detailed presenta tion of research. Basic Group Processes suggests that research on groups is a lively enterprise and forging interesting new theoretical and empirical directions.

Author: Stefan Napel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9783540433354
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book investigates bargaining between two agents. Its objective is to present, to extend, and to apply the present state of theoretical knowledge. A wide range of questions will be considered: First of all, will two parties reach efficient agreements? Traditional economic theory gives a generally affirma tive answer for perfectly rational agents, who can carry out complex calcu lations instantaneously and without cost. The book uses innovative methods to analyse the implications of less demanding assumptions. A practical ques tion related to bargaining is: How much power does the design of institutions such as the U. N. Security Council give to each of its members? Formally, non permanent members' votes are necessary to pass resolutions, but theoretical investigation of pre-voting negotiation attributes all power to the five perma nent members. Or one may ask whether a society should rather finance the education in higher mathematics for a talented person than remedial training for a retarded person? Different concepts of justice yield different answers. Which particular concept is implemented in a given society is also a matter of bargaining, and it is of special philosophical interest to investigate which bargain will be struck in an ideal society in which individual talents and resources are not yet known. Very generally, a bilateral bargaining situation is characterized by two agents - individuals, firms, governments, etc.