Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back Into Economics

By Geoffrey M. Hodgson

Book Overview

Economic theory is currently at a crossroads, where many leading mainstream economists are calling for a more realistic and practical orientation for economic science. Indeed, many are suggesting that economics should be reconstructed on evolutionary lines.
This book is about the application to economics of evolutionary ideas from biology. It is not about selfish genes or determination of our behavior by genetic code. The idea that evolution supports a laissez-faire policy is rebutted. The conception of evolution as progress toward greater perfection, along with the competitive individualism sometimes inferred from the notion of the "survival of the fittest," is found to be problematic. Hodgson explores the ambiguities inherent in biology and the problems involved in applying ideas of past economic thinkers--including Malthus, Smith, Marx, Marshall, Veblen, Schumpeter, and Hayek--and argues that the new evolutionary economics can learn much from the many differing conceptions of economic evolution.
"This is a work of enormous perceptivity and subtlety as well as judiciousness of interpretation and critique . . . [that] establish[es] Hodgson as the leading institutional theorist, and as one of the leading evolutionary theorists, of his generation." --Warren J. Samuels
"A daring and successful attempt to expunge the monopoly of reductionist and mechanistic thinking over evolutionary theory . . . a must for anyone who is interested not only in the foundations of economics, but also in the foundations of social theory." --Elias L. Khalil, Ohio State University
Geoffrey M. Hodgson is University Lecturer in Economics, Judge Institute for Management Studies, University of Cambridge.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472084232
• ISBN13: 9780472084234
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

superb survey and novel presentation of economic ideas

Geoffrey Hodgson's work is a welcome relief from the economic drivel peddled by the interests of the powerful. More importantly, he shows the substantive links bewteen economics and our lives as biological agents in a multdimensional ecology we barely understand. In the process he examines the strengths and weaknesses of many of the great economic thinkers of the past. It is a call to arms for all those who see consequences of bad economic thinking all around them in devastated communities and diminished ecosystems. This is a must read for all those dissatisfied with our current economic world view and want to debate economists on their own terms.