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Article: Why is economics not a complex systems science?
- Article from:
- Journal of Economic Issues
- Article date:
- December 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1898, Thorstein Veblen posed a fundamental question: "Why is economics not an evolutionary science?" Following dramatic advances in evolutionary biology in the latter half of the nineteenth century, this was a question that a number of economists were beginning to ask, including Alfred Marshall, one of the founding fathers of neoclassical economics. (1) While Veblen's insights led to the emergence of one of the two main strands of American institutional economics in the twentieth century, Joseph Schumpeter (1950) offered an "evolutionary economics" which had at its core entrepreneurship and innovation, both technological and organizational. However, despite the ...