From OIE and NIE toward EE: Remarks upon Receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award

摘要

Over a century since Thorstein Veblen's seminal essay on evolutionary economics, it seems "the economic life process" is "still in great measure awaiting theoretical formulation" (1898, 387). There is as yet no widely convincing theory of "economic action" to account for the process in which "it is the human agent that changes—his insight and his appreciation of what these things can be used for is what develops" (387-8). Original institutional economics is widely viewed—if it is viewed at all—as having failed to make good on Veblen's overture. It is not to belittle our efforts that we should recognize this; it is to emphasize the difficulty of the task we face and the need therefore to draw upon the widest possible collegiate. Currently the evolutionary economics literature is developing very rapidly but has yet to achieve centrality and integrative discipline. Geoffrey Hodgson (1999, 127-31) has noted that there are at least six major groups that are called evolutionary economists and expresses doubt that any coherent theme unites them. One tends to agree, but at the same time Hodgson would likely agree that there is merit in investigating possible synergies among these and other groups. No doubt, in addition to original and new institutional economics, potential contributions are spread among various intellectual traditions, such as social and socio-economics; behavioral economics and finance; game theoretic and experimental economics; and related studies in cognitive and self-psychology, economic sociology, anthropology, and cultural geography.