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Stephan Gutzeit, Missing in action: Agency, Science and Public Policy, Volume 45, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 135–137, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scx032
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This volume endeavors to advance the integration of concepts from complexity theory and evolutionary theory in economics and public policy. It succeeds, but at the price of a significant blind spot. I survey three representative chapters (of 17) before pointing out what is missing.
Alan Kirman and Rajiv Sethi pursue a modest strategy, explaining how disequilibrium dynamics should complement, not replace, orthodox economics: Instead of analyzing only equilibria while sidestepping the question how these are reached, their own methodology marries evolution and complexity such that ‘the process of adjustment is itself a central theme’ (p. 16). These adjustment dynamics serve as selection devices among different equilibria, all of which are conceivable on neoclassical grounds: As the authors show for homophily induced racial segregation in Manhattan, building on Schelling’s work (1971, 1978), ‘equilibrium predictions often need to be refined using disequilibrium reasoning’ (p. 24).
By contrast, John F. Padgett eschews ‘the more incremental approach of modifying or extending … traditional economic models’ (p. 189). He stresses that both ‘complexity theory’ and ‘evolutionary theory’ have been defined in different ways, so that any synthesis must vary with the particular definitions employed. Based on Padgett and Powell (2012), Padgett recombines ‘autocatalysis’, which operationalizes ‘evolution’, and ‘multiple networks’, filling in ‘complexity’ (p. 189). Courageously, he takes as his research question one that neither structuralists nor rational choice theorists have addressed satisfactorily: ‘Explaining the emergence of true novelty, before alternatives even exist to be found, is the real challenge’ (p. 191). He argues that someone like Cosimo Medici belongs simultaneously to economic (banker), kinship (father), and political networks (politician). He can therefore innovate by transposing from one network to another: ‘What if he runs his bank like he runs his own family?’ Whether any innovation survives depends on the strength of autocatalytic resistance to change—here, conventional bankers trying to stifle the perturbation. That mechanism enables both continuous innovation, where only one node is upset, and discontinuous change, following the transposition of ‘entire chunks’ (pp. 194f.).