Approaches to Evolutionary Economics and its Intellectual Roots

Casting a chronological glance at the trend of studies in the evolutionary economics area suffices to come to the point that the approach enjoys a long historical background. It is to say that the studies conducted in this area consist of miscellaneous thoughts ranging from insight of early Marxists to Austrian neo-liberalists. Nevertheless, a landmark study that paved the way for the development of the approach was Nelson & Winter’s 1982 book "An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change". This article tries to study the Evolutionary Economics as a rival approach vis-à-vis the mainstream one. As for the mainstream approach, it is to be noted that the analysis of issues is basically focus on static models, continuous market clearing and optimum allocation. Yet, in the first half of the twentieth century and amid growing importance of economic growth-related topics, alternative perspectives were considerably developed. Accordingly, the introduction of innovation concept in the growth theories played a great role in the formation of evolutionary growth model. As for the intellectual thoughts rival mainstream approach, it should be claimed that the influence of evolutionary approach on diverse schools of economic thought are detectable. This article tries to go over some of them including German Historic School and Schumpeterian. Moreover, the researchers, in another part, discussed the concepts such as gradualism, diversity and bounded rationality as the common conceptual aspects observable among ideas of prominent thinkers of evolutionary approach along with some distinguishing concepts such as optimality and biological concepts. Eventually, the intellectual approach of three streams of economic thought, namely, Austrian, Neo Schumpeterian and Cognitive New Institutionalism were discussed as far as the evolutionary principles is concerned.