In order to stand up you must keep cycling: Change and coordination in complex evolving economies

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. In this work we discuss the main building blocks, achievements and challenges of an evolutionary interpretation of the relation between mechanisms of coordination and drivers of change in modern economies, seen as complex evolving systems. It is an evident stylised fact of modern economic systems that there are forces at work which keep them together and make them grow despite rapid and profound modifications of their industrial structures, social relations, techniques of production, patterns of consumption. We suggest that a fruitful interpretation of the two processes rests in what we call the "bicycle conjecture": in order to stand up you must keep cycling. However, changes and transformation are by nature "disequilibrating" forces. Thus there must be other factors which maintain relatively ordered configurations of the system and allow a broad consistency between the conditions of material reproduction (including income distributions, accumulation, available techniques) and the thread of social relations. Terms of use: Documents in

Microfoundations, behaviour, and evolution: Evidence from experiments

“…This quest for stylized facts is, in our opinion, very similar to the approach of evolutionary theory, which defends their agent based modelling because of an external consistency with empirical evidence. In this special issue Dosi and Virgillito (2017) argue in favour of alternative microfoundations for human behaviour, and we claim that RCTs are a key tool to answer this question.…”

“…In this article, we will present a selective number of empirical facts, which could be helpful to heterodox scholars, especially those involved in the study of human behaviour in complex evolving environments (Dosi and Virgillito, 2017) and on the problem of asymmetric adjustment among different components of economic system along trajectories (both observed or "required", e.g. for full employment) of structural dynamics (Scazzieri, 2017).…”

“…1 On the other hand, obviously the experimental evidence presented cannot alone tackle the daunting task of building the evolutionary microfoundations of structural evolutionary change; it provides insights that can help explain emergent properties ruling out 'anthropomorphic' interpretation of dynamics (Dosi & Virgillito, 2017), as long as they are integrated within further theoretical reasoning and complemented by other sources of empirical evidence. For this reason, as we further substantiate both at the beginning of sections 3 and 4, we present and discuss the experimental evidence as a sort of 'neutral' input without entering into, for instance, the theoretical (i.e.…”

“…The insights from behavioural experimental evidence can either be used in the attempt to amend and make the standard rational choice paradigm more 'realistic' 4 , or rather to depart and radically change the paradigm. Put it sharply, we are not interested in discussing such dichotomy, not only because it would be beyond our scope and space here, but also because the evidence presented is sufficiently robust that theorists aiming at external consistency validation (Dosi and Virgillito, 2017) should consider it and use it regardless of ongoing theoretical and normative debates surrounding such evidence.…”

“…In the Appendix we include a general issue of causality and validity related to the interpretation of experiments. Dosi and Virgillito (2017) cite Simon (1969, p. 267) to present a minimalist definition of the economy as a complex evolving system and elaborate on the concept of emerging properties, which would rule out any form of 'anthropomorphization' as the basis of interpreting any form of systemic dynamics. On the other hand, the work of Simon on bounded rationality is cited by different authors in ways that attempt to improve the realism of the neo-classical view of human action or to radically depart from the standard rational choice paradigm.…”