How Useful Is Universal Darwinism as a Framework to Study Competition and Industrial Evolution?

Guido Buenstorf

Papers on Economics and Evolution from Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography

Abstract: The adequate role of Darwinist concepts in evolutionary economics has long been a contentious issue. The controversy has recently been rekindled and modified by the position of "Universal Darwinism", most prominently favored by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen. They argue that the ontology of all evolutionary systems accords to the basic Darwinist scheme of variation, selection and inheritance. This paper focuses on the emerging application of the Universal Darwinist framework to the analysis of market competition and industrial evolution and gauges its usefulness for organizing an evolutionary approach to industrial economics. Drawing on both a theoretical discussion and recent empirical findings, it argues that selection and inheritance concepts narrowly construed after the biological example are of limited help in studying markets and industries. As an alternative to the 'top-down' approach of Universal Darwinism, 'bottom-up' causal theories are suggested that explain how the interplay of descent, experience and learning shapes the competitive performance of firms in the evolution of industries.

Keywords: Universal Darwinism; routines; pre-entry experience; spinoffs; descent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 L10 L20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2005-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esi:evopap:2005-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers on Economics and Evolution from Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography Deutschhausstrasse 10, 35032 Marburg. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christoph Mengs (mengs@students.uni-marburg.de this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).