The anatomy of emergence, with a focus upon capital formation

Harper, David A.; Endres, Anthony M.

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2011.03.013

Cited by 46 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, new combinations are among the emergent economic patterns that make economies more complex Innovation and institutions from the bottom up 977 (Harper and Endres, 2012). They are emergent in that their systemic properties depend on their structural and functional organization and the way they were created.…”

Section: Economic Conceptions Of Innovations As New Combinationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation and institutions from the bottom up: an introduction

Harper

2018

Journal of Institutional Economics

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Abstract. This introduction canvasses broad themes relating to the nexus of innovation and institutions. It first examines the notion of a "new combination" -a core analytical concept in economic theories of innovation and explanations of emergent novelty through bottom-up processes. Following Schumpeter, different theorists have made different claims about the composition and structure of new combinations. Possible constituent elements include factors of production, capital goods, routines, information, ideas, technologies, and property rights. The article then looks synoptically at the institutional dimensions of innovation from alternative perspectives that focus upon different kinds of institutional rules and policy solutions to innovation problems. Neoclassical and evolutionary approaches tend to emphasize specific policy interventions in markets to channel behavior toward particular desired outcomes, whereas institutional and Austrian approaches tend to focus upon general institutional rules (e.g. property and contract) that frame markets and innovation processes. Finally, this article summarizes the papers in the special issue.If we fully understood the nature of industrial entrepreneurship and the conditions under which it flourishes, and I do not claim that we have done more than scratch the surface of that subject, we would at long last be near to answering the great question with which economics began: what are the causes of the wealth of nations? (Blaug, 1986: 229) [T]he modern economy, through its ceaseless creation of new economic knowledge, changed radically the material conditions of life . . . The massive effort to innovate evidently permeated nations from the bottom up.

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Section: Economic Conceptions Of Innovations As New Combinationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation and institutions from the bottom up: an introduction

Harper

2018

Journal of Institutional Economics

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“…Evolutionary and Austrian economists such as Hodgson (1997Hodgson ( , 2000, Dosi et al (2003), Potts (2004, 2008), and Harper and Endres (2012) have argued that when entrepreneurs combine human capital, physical capital, and social rules in novel ways, they give rise to emergent properties. New combinations of the intra-organizational rules that govern production can give rise to new, emergent properties at the level of the firm, such as cheaper production processes and an enhanced capacity to innovate (Potts 2000).…”

Section: Novelty Uncertainty and Order Versus Equilibriummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…New combinations of the intra-organizational rules that govern production can give rise to new, emergent properties at the level of the firm, such as cheaper production processes and an enhanced capacity to innovate (Potts 2000). New combinations of capital goods generate emergent capacities absent from any of the individual components taken in isolation, as for instance when the correct assembly of the parts of an iPhone yields a product that has sui generis communicative and data-transmitting capabilities (Harper and Endres 2012).…”

Section: Novelty Uncertainty and Order Versus Equilibriummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The idea that new combinations of capital goods can give rise to emergent properties, and thereby introduce novelty into the economic system, is of course central to the Hayekian account of capital and, in particular, the idea that there exists complementarities between different kinds of capital goods (Lachmann 1956;Lewin 2011;Harper and Endres 2012).…”

Section: Novelty Uncertainty and Order Versus Equilibriummentioning

confidence: 99%

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Orders, Orders, Everywhere on Hayek's <I>The Market and Other Orders</I>

Lewis

Lewin

2014

SSRN Journal

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This essay-review (of The Market and Other Orders, volume 15 of the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek) uses the essays collected in the volume as a vehicle to discuss certain key issues raised by Hayek's work, including: that the knowledge required for plan coordination is provided not only by prices but also by formal and informal social rules; that the capacity of the price mechanism to coordinate people's plans is best viewed as an emergent property of the market system; that this emergent coordinative power also forms the basis for the process of groupselection the basis of Hayek's theory of cultural evolution; that the nature of the interaction between the overall order of actions and the casual powers of other emergent entities is shaped by social structures; that Hayek's notion of 'order' is different from the economist's notion of 'general equilibrium'; and that Hayek's ideas anticipate those of modern complexity theory.

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“…Emergence involves, among other things (Harper and Endres (2011), wholes being more than the sum of their parts. This is, of course an old idea (Lewes (1875) Entrepreneurship is economic behaviour par excellence but the entrepreneur cannot behave in the manner of homo economicus, engaging in well-defined constrained optimization.…”

Section: Entrepreneurship: the Most Economic Of All Economic Behaviours?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic emergence: An evolutionary economic perspective

Foster

Metcalfe²

2012

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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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. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThe standard neoclassical approach to economic theorizing excludes, by definition, economic emergence and the related phenomenon of entrepreneurship. We explore how the most economic of human behaviours, entrepreneurship, came to be largely excluded from mainstream economic theory. In contrast, we report that evolutionary economists have acknowledged the importance of understanding emergence and we explore the advances that have been made in this regard. We go on to argue that evolutionary economics can make further progress by taking a more naturalistic approach to economic evolution. This requires that economic analysis be fully embedded in complex economic system theory and that associated understandings as to how humans react to states of uncertainty be explicitly dealt with. We argue that knowledge, because of the existence of uncertainty is, to a large degree conjectural and, thus, is closely linked to our emotional states. Our economic behaviour is also influenced by the reality that we, and the systems that we create, are dissipative structures. Thus, we introduce the notions of energy gradients and knowledge gradients as essential concepts in understanding economic emergence and resultant economic growth.* The authors are very grateful to David Harper for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.#1112 2 IntroductionConventional neoclassical economics has at its core the presumption that economic decision making is a matter of cold logic, namely, the application of a constrained optimisation rule. Over the past three decades, this rule has become set, increasingly, in the context of strategic interactions although much of macroeconomics continues to apply it in the context of a single representative agent. Despite the analytical precision that such a rule provides, it can only approximate actual behaviour in historical time when there is either certainty or quantifiable risk, i.e., in simplistic contexts (Foster (2005)). It can only be used to calculate from calculable information. It cannot approximate economic decision-making when there is uncertainty, i.e., the absence of knowledge of the full set of events faced and the probabilities associated with them. Significant technological, organizational or institutional changes occur in states of uncertainty and, furthermore, these changes, in turn, can create new uncertainties in an economic system. This uncertain...

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The anatomy of emergence, with a focus upon capital formation

Cited by 46 publications

References 34 publications

Innovation and institutions from the bottom up: an introduction

Innovation and institutions from the bottom up: an introduction

Orders, Orders, Everywhere on Hayek's <I>The Market and Other Orders</I>

Economic emergence: An evolutionary economic perspective

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