Reflections of an Evolutionary Macroeconomist

John Foster ()
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John Foster: The University of Queensland

A chapter in Schumpeterian Legacy in Modern Times, 2026, pp 295-315 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This essay is about the development of the evolutionary macroeconomic perspective, written in the context of my personal academic journey over the past four decades. I published Evolutionary Macroeconomics in 1987 at a time when the macroeconomic focus in evolutionary economics was mainly on extending the neo-Schumpeterian approach of Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, who sought to provide an alternative to neoclassical growth theory. My approach was different; it was built up from the interdisciplinary perspective of systems theory. It was a speculative venture. Today, evolutionary macroeconomics has matured and is well embedded in evolutionary economics. For example, Giovanni Dosi and his colleagues have developed an impressive Schumpeter-Keynes macroeconomic model that is widely admired. My personal journey involved many twists and turns, where I was greatly assisted in making progress by a number of members of the International Schumpeter Society. Perhaps the most important person in my history is the late and greatly missed Stan Metcalfe. Our association is a very long one, but perhaps our most important contribution to the Society was the creation of ‘The Brisbane Club’ Workshop Series in 1999, in addition to both of us being presidents. These workshops provided forums for intense and extended interactions, not possible at the conferences, from which several important contributions emerged. In the essay, I have, in summary form, tracked how my thinking developed over the years and how this connected with ongoing debates and discussions in the community of evolutionary economists. I hope that readers find these personal reflections of some interest, either as a small piece of the history of evolutionary economic thought or as a stimulus to find out more about evolutionary macroeconomics and its foundations in complex systems theory.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-26294-3_16

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