IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/eureri/14278.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

One Analogy Can Hide Another: Physics and Biology in Alchian’s “Economic Natural Selection”

Author

Listed:
  • Levallois, C.

Abstract

Today, Alchian's "Uncertainty, evolution and economic theory" (1950) is hailed by evolutionary economists as a most important piece, which resumed an evolutionary brand of theorizing in economics after the eclipse of the interwar period. On the other hand, Alchian's article is also cherished by standard economists who consider it to be a powerful defense of the maximization principle in the theory of the firm. Our examination of the early intellectual life of Alchian shows that it was his involvement in military systems analysis at the Rand Corporation that led him to reckon that uncertainty was a fundamental obstacle to marginal analysis. We then demonstrate that Alchian's economic natural selection is a statistical argument which, if phrased in biological parlance, owes its logic to statistical mechanics. This invites to reconsider the strong opposition usually made between evolutionist and mechanist modes of thinking.

Suggested Citation

  • Levallois, C., 2008. "One Analogy Can Hide Another: Physics and Biology in Alchian’s “Economic Natural Selection”," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2008-083-MKT, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    • Handle: RePEc:ems:eureri:14278
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/14278/ERS-2008-083-MKT.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frederic S. Lee, 1984. "The Marginalist Controversy and the Demise of Full Cost Pricing," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4), pages 1107-1132, December.
    2. Amadae, S.M., 2003. "Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226016535, December.
    3. Dopfer,Kurt (ed.), 2005. "The Evolutionary Foundations of Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521621991, January.
    4. R. L. Hall & C. J. Hitch, 1939. "Price Theory And Business Behaviour," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 0(1), pages 12-45.
    5. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1977. "Economics from a Biological Viewpoint," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-52, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2010. "Axiomatic Basics of e-Economics," MPRA Paper 24331, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Ciarli, Tommaso & Valente, Marco, 2016. "The complex interactions between economic growth and market concentration in a model of structural change," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 38-54.
    3. Tommaso Ciarli & Andre' Lorentz & Maria Savona & Marco Valente, 2012. "The role of technology, organisation, and demand in growth and income distribution," LEM Papers Series 2012/06, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    4. Denis Claude & Mabel Tidball, 2022. "Taking firms’ margin targets seriously in a model of competition in supply functions," CEE-M Working Papers hal-03548797, CEE-M, Universtiy of Montpellier, CNRS, INRA, Montpellier SupAgro.
    5. Tommaso Ciarli & André Lorentz & Maria Savona & Marco Valente, 2010. "The Effect Of Consumption And Production Structure On Growth And Distribution. A Micro To Macro Model," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 180-218, February.
    6. Geerat Vermeij, 2009. "Comparative economics: evolution and the modern economy," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 105-134, August.
    7. Joel Mokyr, 2006. "Economics and the Biologists: A Review of Geerat J. Vermeij's Nature: An Economic History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(4), pages 1005-1013, December.
    8. Denis Claude & Mabel Tidball, 2024. "Taking firms' margin targets seriously in a model of competition in supply functions," Post-Print hal-04743649, HAL.
    9. Kanazawa, Satoshi, 2005. "Is "discrimination" necessary to explain the sex gap in earnings?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 269-287, April.
    10. Ingela Alger & Jörgen W. Weibull, 2013. "Homo Moralis—Preference Evolution Under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2269-2302, November.
    11. David Amirault & Paul Fenton & Thérèse Laflèche, 2013. "Asking About Wages: Results from the Bank of Canada’s Wage Setting Survey of Canadian Companies," Discussion Papers 13-1, Bank of Canada.
    12. Kurt Dopfer, 2013. "Economics with a Phylogenetic Signature," Papers on Economics and Evolution 2013-06, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    13. Botte, Florian & Dallery, Thomas, 2019. "Analyse systématique du modèle de Bhaduri et Marglin à prix flexibles : « Ça dépend de la valeur des paramètres » [Systematic analysis of the Bhaduri-Marglin Model with flexible prices: « It depend," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 26.
    14. Tanya Araújo & Miguel St. Aubyn, 2008. "Education, Neighborhood Effects And Growth: An Agent-Based Model Approach," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(01), pages 99-117.
    15. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Stark, Oded, 1993. "How Altruism Can Prevail in an Evolutionary Environment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 149-155, May.
    16. Teppo Felin & Stuart Kauffman & Roger Koppl & Giuseppe Longo, 2014. "Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality," Post-Print hal-01415115, HAL.
    17. Spagano, Salvatore, 2021. "Generalized Darwinism: An Auxiliary Hypothesis," MPRA Paper 108829, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, 2003. "The Mystery of the Routine. The Darwinian Destiny of An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 54(2), pages 355-384.
    19. Sandra Silva & Aurora Teixeira, 2009. "On the divergence of evolutionary research paths in the past 50 years: a comprehensive bibliometric account," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 605-642, October.
    20. André Lorentz & Maria Savona, 2009. "Evolutionary micro-dynamics and changes in the economic structure," Springer Books, in: Uwe Cantner & Jean-Luc Gaffard & Lionel Nesta (ed.), Schumpeterian Perspectives on Innovation, Competition and Growth, pages 137-160, Springer.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Armen A. Alchian; Rand Corporation; Ronald A. Fisher; evolutionary economics; statistical mechanics; theory of the firm;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • B25 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; Stockholm School
    • B31 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - Individuals
    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • M - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    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:ems:eureri:14278. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: RePub (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erimanl.html .

    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.