Evolution and Learning in Markets. Foreword

In the last years, the concepts of individual learning and evolution increasingly gained legitimacy in the eyes of the profession. Extensive efforts have been done to the experimental study of individual learning processes, to the analysis of the characteristics of existing learning models, to the understanding of the way the interaction among individual learning processes can lead to the emergence of economic structures and condition the economic outcome. A number of iconoclastic sounding questions naturally arose, such as: Do learning processes necessarily insure convergence to an efficient equilibrium? Are they always compatible with utility maximization? Can one better explain real phenomena by taking into account specific learning processes? If it possible that the process of learning be at the core of economic fluctuations? Can it explain in a straightforward manner real world occurrences that are hard to justify from a narrow rational perspective? Are social norms explainable as the result of an evolutionary process? The papers presented here are state-of-the-art contributions in some of the most important issues and questions at stake in the current research on learning and evolution in complex economic environments.