An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change - Hardcover

Nelson, Richard R.; Winter, Sidney G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674272277 ISBN 13: 9780674272279

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1982

Synopsis

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 equilib

About this title

About the Author

Richard R. Nelson is George Blumenthal Professor of International and Public Affairs, Business, and Law, Emeritus, at Columbia University.

Review

The book ranges from subtle theoretical analyses of the nature of choice to highly explicit mathematical modeling, from the theory of the firm to the theory of bureaucratic agencies. It is very engagingly written, and conveys extremely well the dilemma that must haunt any social scientist worth his salt: the necessity of choosing between realism ism and simplicity as guides to theory construction. (Jon Elster London Review of Books)

[An] extremely interesting book...This volume increases one's confidence that, after all these years, Schumpeter's intuition can be stated in a formally respectable way, and therefore that the field of industrial organization can begin solving its most important problems. (Journal of Comparative Economics)

An important and interesting book. (Journal of Political Economy)

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0674272277
• ISBN 13: 9780674272279
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 454