Human Evolution, Economic Progress and Evolutionary Failure

Human Evolution, Economic Progress and Evolutionary Failure PDF Author: Bhanoji Rao
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351777769
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of tables -- List of boxes -- List of appendices -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Prologue -- 1 Introduction and context -- PART I Human evolution -- 2 Synoptic view of human evolution via natural selection -- 3 Human evolution: beyond the physical -- PART II Economic progress -- 4 Population growth and economic progress: pre-industrial through the 1940s -- 5 Progress since 1950 and the emerging challenges -- PART III Understanding and tackling evolutionary failure -- 6 The idea of evolutionary failure -- 7 Addressing evolutionary failure: the way forward -- Epilogue: hope for humanity -- References and further reading -- Index.

Modern Evolutionary Economics

Modern Evolutionary Economics PDF Author: Richard R. Nelson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108660789
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
Evolutionary economics sees the economy as always in motion with change being driven largely by continuing innovation. This approach to economics, heavily influenced by the work of Joseph Schumpeter, saw a revival as an alternative way of thinking about economic advancement as a result of Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter's seminal book, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, first published in 1982. In this long-awaited follow-up, Nelson is joined by leading figures in the field of evolutionary economics, reviewing in detail how this perspective has been manifest in various areas of economic inquiry where evolutionary economists have been active. Providing the perfect overview for interested economists and social scientists, readers will learn how in each of the diverse fields featured, evolutionary economics has enabled an improved understanding of how and why economic progress occurs.

Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture

Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture PDF Author: Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108470971
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 575

Book Description
A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

Second Nature

Second Nature PDF Author: Haim Ofek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521625340
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
This book explores how market forces and economics can help answer fundamental questions of human evolution.

Economics as an Evolutionary Science

Economics as an Evolutionary Science PDF Author: Anna Sachko Gandolfi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351324624
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Economics is traditionally taken to be the social science concerned with the production, consumption, exchange, and distribution of wealth and commodities. Economists carefully track the comings and goings of the human household, whether written small (microeconomics) or large (macroeconomics) and attempt to predict future patterns under different situations. However, in constructing their models of economic behavior, economists often lose sight of the actual characteristics and motivations of their human subjects. In consequence, they have found the goal of an explanatory and predictive science to be elusive. Economics as an Evolutionary Science reorients economics toward a more direct appreciation of human nature, with an emphasis on what we have learned from recent advances in evolutionary science. The authors integrate economics and evolution to produce a social science that is rigorous, internally coherent, testable, and consistent with the natural sciences. The authors suggest an expanded definition of "fitness," as in Darwin's survival of the fittest, emphasizing not only the importance of reproduction and the quality of offspring, but also the unique ability of humans to provide material wealth to their children. The book offers a coherent explanation for the recent decline in fertility, which is shown to be consistent with the evolutionary goal of maximizing genetic success. In addition, the authors demonstrate the relevance to economics of several core concepts derived from biologists, including the genetics of parent-offspring conflict, inclusive fitness theory, and the phenomena of R-selection and K-selection. The keystone of their presentation is a cogent critique of the traditional concept of "utility." As the authors demonstrate, the concept can be modified to reflect the fundamental evolutionary principle whereby living things-including human beings-have been selected to behave in a manner that maximizes their genetic representation in future generations. Despite the extraordinary interest in applying evolutionary biology to other disciplines, Economics as an Evolutionary Science marks the first major attempt at a synthesis of biology and economics. Scholarly yet accessible, this volume offers unique and original perspectives on an entire discipline.

Foundations of Economic Evolution

Foundations of Economic Evolution PDF Author: Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781847204745
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This text is an ambitious intellectual enterprise to build a naturalistic foundation for economics, with vast knowledge of physical, biological, social sciences and philosophy. Readers will discover that approaches and insights emergent in institutional studies, (social)-neuroscience, network theory, ecological economics, bio-culture dualistic evolution, etc. are persuasively placed in a grand unified frame.

An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change

An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change PDF Author: Richard R. Nelson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674041431
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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.

Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens

Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens PDF Author: Pascal Boyer
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800642091
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
This volume brings together a collection of seven articles previously published by the author, with a new introduction reframing the articles in the context of past and present questions in anthropology, psychology and human evolution. It promotes the perspective of ‘integrated’ social science, in which social science questions are addressed in a deliberately eclectic manner, combining results and models from evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, economics, anthropology and history. It thus constitutes a welcome contribution to a gradually emerging approach to social science based on E. O. Wilson’s concept of ‘consilience’. Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens spans a wide range of topics, from an examination of ritual behaviour, integrating neuro-science, ethology and anthropology to explain why humans engage in ritual actions (both cultural and individual), to the motivation of conflicts between groups. As such, the collection gives readers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the applications of an evolutionary paradigm in the social sciences. This volume will be a useful resource for scholars and students in the social sciences (particularly psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology and the political sciences), as well as a general readership interested in the social sciences.

Evolutionary Economics: Program and Scope

Evolutionary Economics: Program and Scope PDF Author: Kurt Dopfer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401006482
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
Evolutionary Economics: Program and Scope offers a fresh look at the paradigmatic foundations and basic theoretical propositions of economics. Twelve authors - each of them with his own distinct contribution to economics - make a step forward by reinterpreting major areas of micro and macroeconomics in line with modern evolutionary thinking. This volume offers a unified approach to economics that allows recent developments in various strands of Evolutionary Economics to be integrated and major positions of Neoclassical Economics to be reconsidered. The chapters on `Evolutionary Macro Economics' explore macro areas such as the division of labor and knowledge, technology and institutions, population thinking, meso economics, techno-economic trajectories and industrial sectors. By telescoping structure into time, they highlight the processes of structural change and co-evolution between technologies and institutions, and provide a causal-explanatory core for a modern - evolutionary - theory of economic growth and economic development. The chapters on `Evolutionary Micro Economics' offer insights into the knowledge based theories of the firm and take up the issues of cognitive and behavioral routines. The contributions explore the processes of complex human choice, creativity, and adaptation in selective and path-dependent environments. The discussions make an essential contribution to the cognitive and behavioral foundations of a modern institutional economics.

The Evolutionary Origins of Markets

The Evolutionary Origins of Markets PDF Author: Rojhat Avşar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135117374X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
Our elaborate market exchange system owes its existence not to our calculating brain or insatiable self-centeredness, but rather to our sophisticated and nuanced human sociality and to the inherent rationality built into our emotions. The modern economic system is helped a lot more than hindered by our innate social instincts that support our remarkable capacity for building formal and informal institutions. The book integrates the growing body of experimental evidence on human nature scattered across a variety of disciplines from experimental economics to social neuroscience into a coherent and original narrative about the extent to which market (or impersonal exchange) relations are reflective of the basic human sociality that was originally adapted to a more tribal existence. An accessible resource, this book will appeal to students of all areas of economics, including Behavioral Economics and Neuro-Economics, Microeconomics, and Political Economy.