Description
Book SynopsisSince the 1980s there has been a renewed interest in attempts to introduce a sense of history into economic literature. In this book, the authors argue that it is not possible to explain a state of the world without first analysing the processes that lead to that state.
The contributions collected in this volume share a critical stance towards the timelessness and a historical theorizing of mainstream economics. Past states in the development of an economic process set the range of possibilities for future development and can be used to construct theories based on the irreversibility of economic time. Many of these notable contributors argue that the study of the history of economic thought is important in two ways. Firstly, because it provides important insights into the ways that economists of the past attempted to address the problems of history and secondly, because it helps us to understand the present state of economics as being itself the outcome of a path dependent process.
Evolutionary economists, economic theorists and historians, as well as economists interested in the evolution of economic and other social institutions, will find this challenging collection of papers essential reading.
Trade Review'The editors are to be congratulated for assembling a volume with considerable thematic integrity. It should be required reading for all those interested in path dependence and represents a useful starting place for those who want to know what all the fuss is about.' -- Mark Setterfield, Eastern Economic Journal
Table of ContentsContents: 1. Evolution and Path Dependence in Economic Ideas: Past and Present 2. Path Dependence, Its Crisis, and the Quest for ‘Historical Economics’ 3. The Meaning of Market: Comparing Austrian and Institutional Economics 4. Schumpeter and the Pendulum: How Evolution was Whipped out in the Construction of Canonical Economics 5. Veblen and Commons on Private Property: An Institutionalist Discussion Around a Capitalist Foundation 6. Competition, Competitive Selection and Economic Evolution 7. Evolutionary Themes in the Austrian Tradition: Menger, Wieser and Schumpeter on Institutions and Rationality 8. Reading Edith Penrose’s The Theory of the Growth of the Firm Forty Years On (1959–1999) 9. Economic Analysis of Human Effort in Organizations: A Historical and Critical Perspective 10. Path Dependence in Scientific Evolution 11. Reflections on the Progress of Heterodox Economics Index
