THEMATIC ISSUE ARTICLE: HOW EVOLUTIONARY IS EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS? Human Behavior and Cognition in Evolutionary Economics

Abstract My brand of evolutionary economics recog-nizes, highlights, that modern economies are always in the process of changing, never fully at rest, with much of the energy coming from innovation. This perspective obvi-ously draws a lot from Schumpeter. Continuing innovation, and the creative destruction that innovation engenders, is driving the system. There are winners and losers in the process, but generally the changes can be regarded as progress. The processes through which economic activity and performance evolve has a lot in common with evolu-tion in biology. In particular, at any time the economy is marked by considerable variety, there are selection forces winnowing on that variety, but also continuing emergence of new ways of doing things and often economic actors. But there also are important differences from biological evolution. In particular, both innovation and selection are to a considerable degree purposive activities, often under-taken on the basis of relatively strong knowledge