Survival of the Most Foolish of Fools: The Limits of Evolutionary Selection Theory

Elias Khalil ()

Journal of Bioeconomics, 2000, vol. 2, issue 3, 203-220

Abstract: The paper investigates whether evolutionary selection, in nature or the market, ensures the survival of rational agents. It argues that once rationality appears, evolutionary selection can account for its diffusion—but cannot account for its appearance in the first place. This issue differs from the investigation of whether history matters. The issue of history or path-dependency focuses on whether evolutionary selection can favor the survival of the potentially most productive apparatus (in the biological or technological sense). To show this, the paper commences with the much-neglected difference between efficiency and productivity. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000

Keywords: productivity; efficiency; hysteresis; path dependency; rationality; market selection; natural selection; optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1012230728158 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jbioec:v:2:y:2000:i:3:p:203-220

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10818/PS2

DOI: 10.1023/A:1012230728158

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Bioeconomics is currently edited by Ulrich Witt, Michael T. Ghiselin and David Sloan Wilson

More articles in Journal of Bioeconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().