Session 1 Evolutionary Economics
1.        Evolutionary Theorizing in Economics Nelson & Winter
-Nelson and Winter (1982) How popular this book is? Exp in recent years, in the field of strategic management

-Who trained Nelson and Winter? Koopmans, March and Simon
Koopmans, 1957. Three essays on the state of economic science.
March and Simons1958. Organizations.

-it does not fit into any of the paradigms
Thomas Kuhn, 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions.
Uncertainty: TCE
Firm evolution, dynamic capabilities: RBV

-Schumpeterian competition
Unit of analysis: org/industry level
R&D lead to innovation
Explain long-term evolution of industries (perfect, non-perfect)
Returns on innovation
Sustainability of competition
Entrepreneurial start-up
Distribution of firm size
Market structure

-contrasting: Science-based regime/ trial-&-error cumulative learning
Tacit knowledge

-When neoclassical economics meet evolutionary theory (4 criteria for converge):
-sufficient variety
-behavioral continuity
-profit -induced growth
-limited path dependence (limited path independence?) half-full/half empty glass

-evolutionary studies in general
DV: pattern of entry/exit, how technology changes over time
New product, firm survival
Population (birth/dearth rate), demographic, funeral to funeral ?

-Organizational routine is the analogue of individual skill
   Routine is take the complexity out and keep it functional, consistent efficiency driven
Sociologist and psychologist view routine as simplification, mindless, lazyness

To read:
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Nelson and Winter, 1982) Chapter 1-5

2. Evolutionary Trajectories in Petroleum Firm R&D
Helfat (1994)

Empirical research
Persistent differences between firms
Adjustment costs and adaptive expectation
R &D/sales ratio

Helfat 1994 take-away
strong correlation with previous years
Heterogeneity across firms
Path dependency
Empirical methodology

How does this (fail to) differ from institutional theory?
DiMaggio and Power (1988) maximizing legitimacy
What is the DV?
Economic approach to evolutionary modeling

Profits
RBV and TCA is not effective in explaining profitability
Long-term sustainability

3. Dominance by birthright
Kepper and Simons, 2000

-Klepper (1999)

IO: price takers, fixed quality
Is Oligopoly natural function of markets or problematic?
-weak empirical constructs
-role of management?
-Financial slack?
-generalizability: only for R&D driven industry? High tech industry that requires innovation?
What about bicycles and cars?
-multi-period study
-Institutional blind: U.S vs Japan?
-What about technology breakthrough?

5.        Vertical (dis)integration of computer firms
Malerba et al , 2008

Computer simulation: assumptions; as simple as possible
This paper is unnecessarily complex!

Wrap up & take-away
Methods
Helfat (1994) Tabular comparisons tobit regression, OLS
Klepper & Simons (2000) historical analysis Cox proportional hazards, OLS
Malerba et al. (2008) historical analysis, simulation

Premises
Bounded rationality (longitudinal data)
Sufficient variety( multi-level, heterogeneity in capabilities (same industry environment,  firms end up different in their individual characteristics)
Behavioral continuity (time consistency)
Profit-induced growth (reaction, selection) process
Limited path (in) dependence

我想把这些论文放着 出错了 需要这些论文的朋友可以跟我联系

Nelson & Winter （1982）的书可以在google book 上面读到大部分 建议读读Chapter 1-5

用中文简单说几句 给看一大片英语头昏的同学

evolutionary economics 最近在经济、管理里面大热，Web of Science 近几年引用众多。回到熊彼特的技术创新和经济增长上面。evolutionary economics 对主流经济学的均衡模型进行了挑战，什么是均衡，什么是长期？但是Nelson & Winter 指出在一定的条件下，evolutionary economics & neo-classcial economics 的假设并不完全矛盾。

这四篇文章，第一篇是Nelson &Winter 自己的总结。刚开始我不理解行为持续性Behavioral continuity 和 有限的路径依赖（Limited path dependence）关系，其实，这个就像半杯水满半杯水空，把这个理解为有限的路径不依赖（limited path independence）就豁然开朗了。

第二篇Welfat 是最有名的empirical research 第三篇的几个假设都很有意思，第四篇是模型拟合(simulation)，对Krugman模型熟悉的朋友可以试着推推（对于别的朋友，可能难度太大）。

一个要点是：演化经济学告诉我们，公司现在的研究投入是和以前的研究投入，公司的销售有关的，这么一来，公司之间就有持续的不同(divergence), 而不是institutional theory（注意：我指的狭义的，DiMaggio and Powell) 所讲的趋同性(convergence).

另一个要点是：一个是累积(cumulative learning) ，另一个是science-based regime（就是新技术产生，小公司也有机会）同时存在。但是最后一篇文章的模型，很奇怪的是，在每个阶段都假设该阶段的技术与前面阶段无关，这个有待商榷。

另外：演化经济学和企业资源观(resource-based view) 里面的dynamic capabilities 有关


为什么让我用中文说这些东西比用英语都累。。。汗一个

学习了，厉害。

把这个顶起来

其实管理学里面的Dynamic capabilities也是一种evolutionary economics 的思路。

国际商务里面的乌普萨拉模型，也是一种动态evolution (抑或说是revolution?)