IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joevec/v8y1998i1p45-66.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Schumpeterian process competition, welfare and laissez-faire: An experiment in artificial economic evolution

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy M. Wakeley

    (School of Management, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK)

Abstract

A simulation model is used to construct a regime of artificial economic evolution, where Schumpeterian process competition prevails, in the presence of technological uncertainty and bounded rationality. The output decision of the firm is represented by a behavioural algorithm, which allows for the presence of collusive behaviour. The purpose of the experiments is to go some way towards addressing the twin issues of the nature of the relationship between market structure and industry performance in a dynamic setting, and the contention that the evolutionary metaphor implies a laissez-faire stance with respect to policy issues. Under the simplifying assumptions of the model, experiments suggest that industries which generate high average concentration over a given period can compare favourably with industries that generate low average concentration, if the time profiles of both welfare and concentration are analysed. Also, the experiments suggest that the industry will naturally evolve a structure best suited to exploit the technological environment, but despite this there is still a role for intervention into the competitive process.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy M. Wakeley, 1998. "Schumpeterian process competition, welfare and laissez-faire: An experiment in artificial economic evolution," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 45-66.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joevec:v:8:y:1998:i:1:p:45-66
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00191/papers/8008001/80080045.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted
    File URL: http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00191/papers/8008001/80080045.ps.gz
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wakeley, Tim, 2002. "The New Evolutionary Microeconomics: Complexity, Competence and Adaptive Behaviour: Jason Potts; Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, xii + 239. Hardcover 2000, ISBN 1-84064-543-1, [UK pound]49.95, $80.00; Paper," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 279-286, April.
    2. Powell, John H. & Wakeley, Timothy M., 2003. "Evolutionary concepts and business economics: Towards a normative approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 153-161, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Artificial economic evolution ; Schumpeterian competition ; Bounded rationality ; Collusion ; Laissez-faire;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joevec:v:8:y:1998:i:1:p:45-66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.