Applied Evolutionary Economics

This paper has three objectives. First, it seeks to set an agenda in which technological successions can be meaningfully discussed. Second, it aims to establish the necessary conditions under which a technological succession may occur. Third, in establishing this set of conditions, the paper identifies some useful analytical tools which could be employed in a formal model of technological transitions. Opening up the research agenda on transition phases from established to new technologies is a key issue in discussions of technological evolution and its impacts on society and the environment. Given the increasing returns to adoption enjoyed by an established technology, it is necessary to investigate the conditions under which it is possible for technological succession to occur. In so doing, the paper takes on board the important insights into increasing returns to adoption and path dependency made by the lock-in literature but places these within a new, more general, historical setting. A number of steps need to be taken when preparing the ground for a formal model of technological succession. First, one must have a clear definition of the elements necessary to operationalise the concept of succession in the social domain. Second, the paper offers an interpretation of previous work on socio-technology paradigms, whereby these are viewed as a set of coupled selection mechanisms that shape the rate and direction of technological innovation. Third, a socio-technical matrix approach is used in order to appreciate the way in which agents -with heterogeneous preferences -compare rival technologies and make their selections. Finally there is a discussion of factors that may produce inertia to technological switching. With these elements in place, the paper argues, we can begin to explain how technological learning generates long period of stasis punctuated by sudden bursts of rapid technological change.

The paper explores the idea that properties at the level of firms coevolve with more aggregate properties at the level of market institutions in the dynamics of industries. We propose that the structure of network of vertical relations limits the effect of increasing returns at the firm level. The paper develops a set of empirical measures and discusses a detailed case study of the commercial jet engine industry. The analysis of the structural dynamics of the network of vertical relations between engine suppliers and airframe manufacturers during the history of the industry (1958-1997) explains a final configuration of the industry marked by the coexistence of increasing returns to investments in R&D and marketing activities, with an intense competition among a few large incumbents, a low level of concentration and a strong instability of market shares. The emergence of a hierarchical network with a core and a periphery leads to equalisation of technical and market opportunities within the core and prevents incumbents to exit the industry.

Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public.

Background: Occupational health covers all aspects of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong focus on primary prevention of hazards. There are several health risks, such as respiratory problems, injuries/accidents, musculoskeletal disorders, cancers, mental health disorders, skin ailments, infectious diseases, and many more involved in the occupation, which exclusively depends on workplace conditions. Objectives: The objective of the study was to understand the extent of awareness about occupational health risks involved in tannery occupation and adopted preventive measures by the tannery workers of Kanpur, India. Methods: Information for the present research was strained from a cross-sectional household study of tannery workers in the Jajmau area of Kanpur, India. The survey was piloted through the period January-June 2015, and 284 samples were collected. This study has adopted a three-stage sampling design. The frequency distribution and cross-tabulation were used. The difference in the awareness of various morbidities was tested using the chi-square test. A logistic regression analysis was used to identify individual risk factors. Results: The prevalence of awareness of tannery work is very hazardous in nature varies from 73% to 93% among the tannery workers. Tannery workers having a middle-school level of education were 3.01 times more likely to be aware of the hazards as compared to the illiterate workers. Tannery workers aged 36 and above were 0.34 times were 0.58 times less likely to aware of a hazardous work environment. Tannery workers who belong to the younger cohort (16-24 years) reported a higher awareness of respiratory problems (38%), skin complaints (59%), and gastrointestinal issues (21%) than those aged 36 years and above. About one-third of Beamhouse workers (33%) and over a quarter (26%) of the wet finishing had moderate to high dermal contact with the chemicals. The highest use of gloves and masks is seen in Beamhouse work (12 & 13%). Conclusions: The outcomes of the study give a clear indication of the effect of the workstation environment on the health status of workers and require the use of adequate measures to improve the facilities and thereby the health status of tannery workers.

First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to my advisor, Arlene Teraoka, for her patience, encouragement, and fortitudeas well as her critical eyein reading so many drafts with such care and attention. I am also very grateful to Ruth-Ellen Joeres, chair of my committee, for her tireless support and expert guidance. Many thanks also to the other members of my committee, Rick McCormick, Matthias Rothe, and Barbara Wolbert, all of whom have been unfailingly generous with their time and their advice. This project benefitted from the financial support of several institutions and individuals at the University of Minnesota, including the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch; the Center for Austrian Studies; the Center for German and European Studies; the College of Liberal Arts; Hella Lindemeyer Mears; and Gerhard and Janet Weiss. For the funding, including the Zantop Travel Award, as well as for the welcoming, intellectually rigorous, and often hilarious community, I am especially grateful to the Coalition of Women in German. I have been touched and humbled by the support, advice, and motivation provided by my peers and colleagues, past and present. Ashley Olstad deserves exceptional thanks for her advice and insight, both personal and professional, and for always cheering me on.

The paper explores the idea that properties at the level of firms coevolve with more aggregate properties at the level of market institutions in the dynamics of industries. We propose that the structure of network of vertical relations limits the effect of increasing returns at the firm level. The paper develops a set of empirical measures and discusses a detailed case study of the commercial jet engine industry. The analysis of the structural dynamics of the network of vertical relations between engine suppliers and airframe manufacturers during the history of the industry (1958-1997) explains a final configuration of the industry marked by the coexistence of increasing returns to investments in R&D and marketing activities, with an intense competition among a few large incumbents, a low level of concentration and a strong instability of market shares. The emergence of a hierarchical network with a core and a periphery leads to equalisation of technical and market opportunities within the core and prevents incumbents to exit the industry.

This paper proposes a new approach to explain the long-term evolution of a supplier industry. The network of vertical relations between suppliers and buyers is identified as a determinant of the concentration of the supplier industry and of the dynamics of market shares. The vertical structure of the industry is captured by collecting information on all vertical relations between dyads of firms and by building matrices of interaction for the aircraft-engine industry from 1953 to 1997. An econometric exercise is used to test some hypotheses about the relation between selected network measures and industrial dynamics.

The paper explores the idea that properties at the level of firms coevolve with more aggregate properties at the level of market institutions in the dynamics of industries. We propose that the structure of network of vertical relations limits the effect of increasing returns at the firm level. The paper develops a set of empirical measures and discusses a detailed case study of the commercial jet engine industry. The analysis of the structural dynamics of the network of vertical relations between engine suppliers and airframe manufacturers during the history of the industry (1958-1997) explains a final configuration of the industry marked by the coexistence of increasing returns to investments in R&D and marketing activities, with an intense competition among a few large incumbents, a low level of concentration and a strong instability of market shares. The emergence of a hierarchical network with a core and a periphery leads to equalisation of technical and market opportunities within the core and prevents incumbents to exit the industry.

Discussion on the gradual vs. punctuated modes of development are present for decades not only in biology but also in economics. It seems that there are evidences that both kind of development can be identified in the sphere of socio-economic processes. We will use simulation approach to support our suggestions. Economic evolution is not gradual but ought to be seen as combination of gradual development (in the phase of climbing the local peak in the adaptive landscape) and punctuated (in short periods after emergences of radical innovation, i.e. 'jumps' from a lower local peak to a higher peak in the adaptive landscape).

Regional economics and economic sociology are strongly claiming the need to conduct empirical research on Communities, considered as the most significant expressions of collective and informal action in contemporary cities. They are considered important because they make up an essential portion of the practices that coordinate the actors of a complex regional industrial organizational ecology. On these bases, the adoption of a network approach and motivational analysis of links has been recommended for empirical analysis. The present study intends to provide a contribution in this sense through an updated reading of the incentive question and a possible application of the same to an empirical case. The comparison between the theoretical elements and those derived from the observed reality will allow us to draw some conclusions. In particular, the advantages/disadvantages of the individual's adherence to the communities and of the latter to the local network established with the public institutions. Finally, some hypotheses on the future evolution of the observed network will be formulated in terms of reciprocity in the definition of the critical tasks.

Evolution of technology is a stepwise advancement of a complex system of artifact, driven by interaction with subsystems and other systems, considering technical choices, technical requirements and science advances, which generate new and/or improved products or processes for use or consumption to satisfy increasing needs and/or to solve complex problems of people in society. This study explains evolution of technology with two different approaches: theories based on processes of competitive substitution of a new technology for the old one and theories considering a multi-mode interaction between technologies, such as the theory of technological parasitism. These theories described here can encourage further theoretical and empirical exploration in the terra incognita of the evolution of technology to explain economic and social change in human society.

One of the most recently observed stylised facts in the field of economic growth is the persistent bimodal shape of the world income distribution.. Of course, some theoretical explanations for this new stylised fact already have been provided by neoclassical growth theory within a maximising framework. Although innovation and technology are recognised as being the driving forces behind growth processes,

One of the most recently observed stylised facts in the field of economic growth is the persistent bimodal shape of the world income distribution.. Of course, some theoretical explanations for this new stylised fact already have been provided by neoclassical growth theory within a maximising framework. Although innovation and technology are recognised as being the driving forces behind growth processes, these models maintain the restrictive assumption of a rational acting representative agent. In this paper we draw on a synergetic approach of evolutionary economics. In the model, the countries' productivity development is depicted as a sequence of relative technological levels and the movement from one level to the next higher one is governed by stochastic transition rates. The motivation for these transition rates is based on the knowledge-based approach of evolutionary economics, thereby taking into account depleting technological opportunities, the effects of technological infrastructure and permanent technological obsolescence due to an ubiquitous scientific progress. With this model we are able to show how a persistent bimodal distribution -the twin peaksendogenously emerges via self-organisation. This simulated distribution matches well with the kernel density plot, calculated for GDP per worker data relative to the GDP per worker in the USA over the period 1960-90 for a sample of 104 countries. Both the empirical and theoretical results show an evolution of the density function toward bimodality with a decreasing number of countries with low relative productivity levels and an increasing number of countries with high relative productivity levels, indicating a prevalent catching-up during the period of investigation. However, the separation of both groups of countries is getting more significant over time and therefore further catching-up is expected to become increasingly difficult in the future.

This paper has three objectives. First, it seeks to set an agenda in which technological successions can be meaningfully discussed. Second, it aims to establish the necessary conditions under which a technological succession may occur. Third, in establishing this set of conditions, the paper identifies some useful analytical tools which could be employed in a formal model of technological transitions.

A dynamic microeconomic model is presented that establishes the price and unit sales evolution of heterogeneous goods consisting of successive homogenous product generations. It suggests that for a fast growing supply the mean price of the generations are governed by a logistic decline towards a floor price. It is shown that generations of a heterogeneous good are in mutual competition. Their market shares are therefore governed by a Fisher-Pry law while the total unit sales are governed by the lifecycle dynamics of the good. As a result the absolute unit sales of a generation exhibit a characteristic sales peak consisting of a rapid increase followed by a long tail.
The presented approach shows that the evolution of successive product generations can be understood as an evolutionary adaptation process. The applicability of the model is confirmed by a comparison with empirical investigations on successive DRAM generations.

Only recently a new stylised fact of economic growth has been introduced, the bimodal shape of the distribution of per capita income or the twin-peaked nature of that distribution. Drawing on the Summers/Hestons Penn World .6 (1991) we determine kernel density distributions which are able to detect the aforementioned twin peaked structure and show that the world income distribution starting with an unimodal structure in 1960 evolves subsequently to a bimodal or twin-peak structure. This empirical results can be explained theoretically by a synergetic model based on the master equation approach as in Pyka/Krüger/Cantner (1999). This paper attempts to extend this discussion by taking the reverse procedure, that is to find empirical evidence for the working mechanism of the theoretical model. We determine empirically the transition rates used in the synergetic approach by applying alternatively NLS to chosen functional forms and genetic programming in order to determine the functional forms and the parameters simultaneously. Using the so determined transition rates in the synergetic model leads in both cases to the emergence of the bimodal distribution, which, however, is only in the latter case a persistent phenomenon.

The building blocks of our model are bounded-rational actors with specific sets of endowments: 'entrepreneurial spirit', human capital and venture capital. The entrepreneurial behavior to found a firm is triggered by the individuals' endowments, their social network and the evaluation of the economic situation. Bandwagon effects occur when high growth rates in emerging markets increase firm entries and firm entries in return increase growth rates until competition unfolds its selective power. The firms' survivability is determined by its founders endowments and its competitiveness. If actors are right or wrong in evaluating their economic situation and their consequent decisions is proven ex post. Thus, there will be winners and losers.

The literature on the regional convergence of the Indian states has generated a lot of debate. In the post reform period, most of the literature found divergence of per capita income among Indian states. These studies analysed the growth dynamics of these states using either a regression based approach or one based on some summary measure of inequality. As a result, these studies were unable to reveal what happened to the entire cross-section of the Indian states in the context of convergence. Following Quah (1997), we use the distribution dynamics approach to analyse growth dynamics in different groups of Indian states for the period of 1993 to 2005, and study the evolution of the entire distribution over time. We use the stochastic kernel, and its 3-dimentional surface plots and 2-dimentional contour plots to study the dynamics. Our result shows that in post reform period per capita income distribution shows a tendency towards bimodality and polarization.

One of the most recently observed stylised facts in the field of economic growth is the persistent bimodal shape of the world income distribution.. Of course, some theoretical explanations for this new stylised fact already have been provided by neoclassical growth theory within a maximising framework. Although innovation and technology are recognised as being the driving forces behind growth processes, these models maintain the restrictive assumption of a rational acting representative agent. In this paper we draw on a synergetic approach of evolutionary economics. In the model, the countries' productivity development is depicted as a sequence of relative technological levels and the movement from one level to the next higher one is governed by stochastic transition rates. The motivation for these transition rates is based on the knowledge-based approach of evolutionary economics, thereby taking into account depleting technological opportunities, the effects of technological infrastructure and permanent technological obsolescence due to an ubiquitous scientific progress. With this model we are able to show how a persistent bimodal distribution -the twin peaksendogenously emerges via self-organisation. This simulated distribution matches well with the kernel density plot, calculated for GDP per worker data relative to the GDP per worker in the USA over the period 1960-90 for a sample of 104 countries. Both the empirical and theoretical results show an evolution of the density function toward bimodality with a decreasing number of countries with low relative productivity levels and an increasing number of countries with high relative productivity levels, indicating a prevalent catching-up during the period of investigation. However, the separation of both groups of countries is getting more significant over time and therefore further catching-up is expected to become increasingly difficult in the future.