Building on the ontology of evolutionary realism recently proposed by Dopfer and Potts (forthcoming), we develop an analytical framework for evolutionary economics with a micro-meso-macro architecture. The motive for reconception is to make clear the highly complex and emergent nature of existence and change in economic evolution. For us, the central insight is that an economic system is a population of rules, a structure of rules, and a process of rules. The economic system is a rule-system contained in what we call the meso. From the evolutionary perspective, one cannot directly sum micro into macro. Instead, we conceive of an economic system as a set of meso units, where each meso consists of a rule and its population of actualizations. The proper analytical structure of evolutionary economics is in terms of micro-meso-macro. Micro refers to the individual carriers of rules and the systems they organize, and macro consists of the population structure of systems of meso. Micro structure is between the elements of the meso, and macro structure is between meso elements. The upshot is an ontologically coherent framework for analysis of economic evolution as change in the meso domain - in the form of what we call a meso trajectory - and a way of understanding the micro-processes and macro-consequences involved. We believe that the micro-meso-macro analytical framework can greatly enhance the focus, clarity, and, ultimately, power, of evolutionary economic theory. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2004Micro, Meso, Macro, Rule, Agent, Trajectory,

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The applicability of complex systems theory in economics is evaluated and compared with standard approaches to economic theorizing based upon constrained optimization. A complex system is defined in the economic context and differentiated from complex systems in physiochemical and biological settings. It is explained why it is necessary to approach economic analysis from a network, rather than a production and utility function perspective, when we are dealing with complex systems. It is argued that much of heterodox thought, particularly in neo-Schumpeterian and neo-Austrian evolutionary economics, can be placed within a complex systems perspective upon the economy. The challenge is to replace prevailing 'simplistic' theories, based in constrained optimization, with 'simple' theories, derived from network representations in which value is created through the establishment of new connections between elements.

This paper outlines an evolutionary theory of adaptive growth based on the twin principles of enterprise and the coordinating role of markets. The central organising idea is that economies never grow without simultaneous development. Growth as conventionally understood is a product of structural change and economic self-transformation, and these processes are closely connected with but not reducible to the growth of knowledge. The dominant theme is enterprise, the variations it generates, and the multiple connections between investment, innovation, demand and structural transformation. We explore the dependence of macroeconomic productivity growth on the diversity of technical progress functions and income elasticities of demand at the industry level, and the resolution of this diversity into patterns of economic change through market processes. We show how industry growth rates are emergent phenomena, constrained by higher order processes of emergence that convert an ensemble of industry growth rates into an aggregate rate of growth. The growth of productivity, output and employment are determined mutually and endogenously, and their values depend on the variation in the primary causal influences in the system.