Learning in Evolutionary Environments

Giovanni Dosi, Luigi Marengo () and Giorgio Fagiolo ()

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: The purpose of this work is to present a sort of short selective guide to an enormous and diverse literature on learning processes in economics. We argue that learning is an ubiquitous characteristic of most economic and social systems but it acquires even greater importance in explicitly evolutionary environments where: a) heterogeneous agents systematically display various forms of "bounded rationality"; b) there is a persistent appearance of novelties, both as exogenous shocks and as the result of technological, behavioural and organisational innovations by the agents themselves; c) markets (and other interaction arrangements) perform as selection mechanisms; d) aggregate regularities are primarily emergent properties stemming from out-of-equilibrium interactions. We present, by means of examples, the most important classes of learning models, trying to show their links and differences, and setting them against a sort of ideal framework of "what one would like to understand about learning...". We put a signifiphasis on learning models in their bare-bone formal structure, but we also refer to the (generally richer) non-formal theorising about the same objects. This allows us to provide an easier mapping of a wide and largely unexplored research agenda.

Keywords: Learning; Evolutionary Environments; Economic Theory; Rationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-12-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-ino and nep-tid
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2003-20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Learning in evolutionary environment (1996)
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:ssa:lemwps:2003/20

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).