Economic Evolution, Learning, and Complexity, 2002

The twelve papers in this collection grew out of the workshop on "Eco­ nomic Evolution, Learning, and Complexity" held at the University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany on May 23-25, 1997. The Augsburg workshop was the second of two events in the Euroconference Series on Evolutionary Economics, the first of which was held in Athens, Greece in September 1993. A special issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Econo­ mics (1993(4)) edited by Yannis Katsoulacos on "Evolutionary and Neo­ classical Perspectives on Market Structure and Economic Growth" con­ tains selected papers from the Athens conference. The Athens conference explored neoclassical and evolutionary perspectives on technological competition and increasing returns. It helped to identify the dis­ tinguishing features of evolutionary scholarship. The Augsburg workshop was more oriented toward exploring methodological issues in evolutiona­ of the papers employed new me­ ry and related scholarship. A number thods, such as genetic programming and experimental analysis, some developed new econometric techniques or raised new empirical issues in evolutionary economics, and some relied on simulation techniques. Twelve papers covering a range of areas were selected for this collection. The papers address central issues in evolutionary and Schumpeterian accounts of industrial competition, learning, and innovation.

I Oligopoly and Learning.- 1 Norms as emergent properties of adaptive learning: The case of economic routines.- 2 An experimental study of adaptive behavior in an oligopolistic market game.- 3 Horizontal heterogeneity, technological progress and sectoral development.- II Industry Studies.- 4 Market share instability and stock price volatility during the industry life cycle: the US automobile industry.- 5 Knowledge spillovers in biotechnology: sources and incentives.- 6 Chance, necessity and competitive dynamics in the Italian Steel Industry.- III Econometric and Empirical Techniques.- 7 Detecting self-organisational change in economic processes exhibiting logistic growth.- 8 Modelling growth in economic systems as the outcome of a process of self-organisational change: a fuzzy regression approach.- 9 Variety and economic development: conceptual issues and measurement problems.- IV Growth, Human Capital and Innovation.- 10 Reassessing the empirical validity of the human-capital augmented neoclassical growth model.- 11 Institutions, entrepreneurship, economic flexibility and growth - experiments on an evolutionary micro-to-macro model.- V Governmental Learning and Policy.- 12 Interaction between public policies and technological competition under environmental risks.