David Sloan Wilson — How to Construct a New Invisible Hand: A Conversation with Peter Barnes

In a previous essay, I announced a new concept of the invisible hand to replace the old and erroneous idea that the pursuit of self-interest robustly benefits the common good. The new version is based on examples of the invisible hand that exist in nature, such as cells that benefit multi-cellular organisms and social insects that benefit their colonies. These lower-level units don’t have the welfare of the higher-level units in mind. They don’t even have minds in the human sense of the word. Instead, they exhibit behaviors that have been winnowed by higher-level selection to benefit the common good. Higher-level selection is the invisible hand.

Absorbing this fact leads to a robust conclusion about the design of our own societies. We must learn to function in two capacities: 1) As designers of social and economic systems; and 2) as participants in the systems that we design. As participants, we need not have the welfare of the whole system in mind, in classic invisible hand fashion. But as design­ers, we must. The invisible hand must be constructed, which would be a contra­diction of terms according to the old concept.

Yet, this does not mean that the invisible hand must be constructed by centralized plan­ning, the main alternative to laissez faire economic policies that is typically imagined. Instead, the design process needs to be evolutionary, iterative, and collaborative, resulting in mechanisms that work like the invisible hand, even though they never could have arisen on their own. This constitutes a middle path between laissez faire and centralized planning that could be a breakthrough in solving the problems of our age....

Evonomics
How to Construct a New Invisible Hand: A Conversation with Peter Barnes
David Sloan Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

David Sloan Wilson — The Invisible Hook: How Pirate Society Proves Economic Self-Interest Wrong

Pirate bands are radically democratic and egalitarian: Hayek and the evolutionary imperative.

Evonomics
The Invisible Hook: How Pirate Society Proves Economic Self-Interest Wrong
David Sloan Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

Michael Muthukrishna — Bribery, Cooperation, and the Evolution of Prosocial Institutions

The marvel of human evolution was not speech or tool use, as is ordinarily believed, since other animals have developed such skills albeit at a much more limited scale.

The single most important evolutionary trait that sets humans apart from other animals is the ability to scale potential to the species level. Other animals are stuck at the level of in-group cooperation but inter-group competition. 

Conversely, humans have become aware of themselves at the societal and  species levels, which enables them to universalize thought, speech and action and to extend this capability to those outside the group.

There are tradeoffs involved, however. As Marx observed, this ability to scale up and out comes at a cost, since the intimate level of the interpersonal is lost with scale. Persons become individuals, and conventional economics treats individuals as atoms comparable to physics. When the interpersonal degrades, then anonymity becomes a value.

Where custom and personal trust are no longer effectively operative, law is required as an institution to replace their functions. This comes at the risk of alienation as class structure develops and becomes dominant. 

Moreover, humans do not fully transcend their biological heritage and in-group cooperation and out-group competition persists, leading to behavior that is anti-social in the wider sense, but perfectly rational from the point of view of evolutionary background.

This must be recognized and addressed.

When a leader gives his daughter a government contract, it’s nepotism. But it’s also cooperation at the level of the family, well explained by inclusive fitness [2], undermining cooperation at the level of the state. When a manager gives her friend a job, it’s cronyism. But it’s also cooperation at the level of friends, well explained by reciprocal altruism [3], undermining the meritocracy. Bribery is a cooperative act between two people, and so on. It’s no surprise that family-oriented cultures like India and China are also high on corruption, particularly nepotism. Even in the Western world, it’s no surprise that Australia, a country of mates, might be susceptible to cronyism. Or that breaking down kin networks predicts lower corruption and more successful democracies (Akbari, Bahrami-Rad & Kimbrough, 2017; Schulz, 2017). Part of the problem is that these smaller scales of cooperation are easier to sustain and explain than the kind of large-scale anonymous cooperation that we in the Western world have grown accustomed to...

Good read.

Evonomics
Bribery, Cooperation, and the Evolution of Prosocial Institutions
Michael Muthukrishna | Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics. Research Associate of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, Affiliate of the Yale Applied Cooperation Team, Affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD, and Technical Director of The Database of Religious History

See also

How the Postal System and the Printing Press Transformed European Markets

Prateek Raj is a PhD Candidate in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at University College London and a Research Associate at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Jason Smith — What should we expect from an economic theory?

I got into a back and forth with Srinivas T on Twitter after my comment on an Evonomics tweet. As an aside, Noah Smith has a good piece on frequent contributor at Evonomics David Sloan Wilson (my own takes are here, here, here). I'll come back to this later. Anyway, Evonomics put up a tweet quoting an economist saying "we need to behave like scientists" and abandon neoclassical economics.

My comment was that this isn't how scientists actually behave. Newton's laws are wrong, but we don't abandon them. They remain a valid approximation when the system isn't quantum or relativistic. Srinivas took exception, saying surely I don't believe neoclassical economics is wrong in the same way Newton is wrong.

I think this gets at an important issue: what should we expect of an economic theory?….

Information Transfer Economics
What should we expect from an economic theory?
Jason Smith

David Sloan Wilson — My Opinion of Noahpinion: A Response to Noah Smith’s Critique About the Future of Economics

It’s a pleasure to be critiqued by Noah Smith in his widely read blog Noahpinion. I have no cause to complain, since his critique is good natured and he agrees with at least some of my points. Still, I feel misunderstood in a way that is consequential for the future of economics.…

What stands out in Noah’s critique of my piece is its complacency. It’s like he’s discussing the arrangement of deck chairs aboard the Titanic. There is no sense of urgency about the failure of orthodox economics theory and the need to place it on a new foundation.…

Evonomics
My Opinion of Noahpinion: A Response to Noah Smith’s Critique About the Future of Economics
David S. Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

Robert Atkinson — Complexity and Evolution Need to Play a Foundational Role in the Next Economic Paradigm

If there was any possible upside from the destruction stemming from the financial crisis and Great Recession it was that neoclassical economics’ intellectual hegemony began to be more seriously questioned. As such, the rising interest in complexity theory is a welcome development. Indeed, approaching economic policy from a complexity perspective promises significant improvements. However, this will only be the case if we avoid a Hayekian passivity grounded in the view that action is too risky given just how complex economic systems are. This would be a significant mistake for the risk of non-action in complex systems is often higher than the risk of action, especially if the latter is informed by a rigorous thinking grounded in robust argumentation.

The flaws of neoclassical economics have long been pointed out, including its belief of the “economy as machine”, where, if policymakers pull a lever they will get an expected result. However, despite what Larry Summers has written, economics is not a science that applies for all times and places. It is a doctrine and as economies evolve so too should doctrines. After the Second World War, when the United States was shifting from what Michael Lind calls the second republic (the post-Civil War governance system) to the third republic (the post-New-Deal, Great Society governance structure), there was an intense intellectual debate about the economic policy path America should take. In Keynes-Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, Nicholas Wapshott described this debate between Keynes (a proponent of the third republic), who articulated the need for a larger and more interventionist state, and Hayek (a defender of the second republic), who worried about state over-reach. Today, we are in need of a similar great debate about the future of economic policy for the emerging “fourth republic.”….

This is really quite good. The next step beyond Hayek v. Keynes, where the debate is stuck now.

Evonomics
Complexity and Evolution Need to Play a Foundational Role in the Next Economic Paradigm
Robert Atkinson | President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based technology policy think tank

Radical Remaking of Economics, and What it Means — David Sloan Wilson interviews Eric Beinhocker

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Eric Beinhocker’s influential book The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. Like an earthquake tremor, Beinhocker’s book rattled the windows of the economic establishment by proposing a new foundation for the discipline that was paradigmatically different than its current foundation inspired by Newtonian physics.

Evonomics
Radical Remaking of Economics, and What it Means
David Sloan Wilson interviews Eric Beinhocker

Geoffrey Hodgson — Imagine Economics as an Evolutionary Science

Veblen took the view that humans were driven by habit. Habits are guided by both inherited propensities – called instincts – and existing institutions. A habit is a learned capacity to act or think in a particular way. Instead of beliefs being prime movers, they too are based on habits.

As the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey argued eloquently in his 1922 book Human Nature and Conduct, deliberate choices occur when our habitual propensities clash and we are forced to make a decision between them. Generally, habit drives reason and choice, rather than the other way round.

This way of putting instinct first, habit second, and reason third is consistent with our understanding of human evolution. The instinct-habit-reason ordering is consistent with the sequence in which these emerged long ago in the evolution of our species. It is also consistent with the way in which they develop in each human individual, from infanthood to adulthood.

This evolutionary perspective on human agency is very different from the mind-first, or beliefs-first, perspectives that still dominate economics and much of social science.…

As George Lakoff frequently points out, mind-first is so 18th century.

Evonomics
Imagine Economics as an Evolutionary Science

Geoffrey M. Hodgson is research professor at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, England

David Sloan Wilson — The Death of the Invisible Hand: Why the Narrow Pursuit of Self Interest Always Fails

Good read. I recommend reading the whole thing. It is not long. It relates to recent discussion about "Darwinism" in the comment.

Evonomics
The Death of the Invisible Hand: Why the Narrow Pursuit of Self Interest Always Fails
David Sloan Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

Anna Silim — What is New Economic Thinking?

Three strands of heterodox economics that are leading the way…

Complexity, evolutionary and behavioural economics

Various schools of economic thought outside the neoclassical mainstream are often placed together under the banner heading of ‘heterodox economics’. This term is used to describe any innovative way of thinking about the economy, from those that represent complete breaks from the neoclassical approach to others seeking to undermine only some of its main ideas.

In this piece, three strands of heterodox economics are discussed in some detail: complexity, evolutionary and behavioural economics. Each offers different insights into economic analysis by seeking a more accurate representation of the economy, and in so doing opens up new possibilities for policymakers. This essay summarises their basic tenets – and discusses what they might mean for public policy.…

Useful summary. The new thinking in economics is making an effort to connect theory with reality after neoclassical economics prioritized theory over reality to the degree that economists lost contact with reality by caging themselves in formalism.

Evonomics

What is New Economic Thinking?

Amna Silim 

Geoffrey Hodgson — Why We Need Adam Smith and Charles Darwin to Fix the Global Economy

Adam Smith is said to be the founder of modern economics.[1] Yet, contrary to a widespread view, Smith regarded individuals as driven by moral motives as well as self-interest. This is most clear in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, but ideas of justice and morality also pervade his Wealth of Nations.[2]

It took economics a while to get rid of this argument. In two classic works published in 1871, William Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger placed individual self-interest at the foundation of economics. Three years later, Léon Walras built neoclassical general equilibrium analysis upon a similar assumption. For the next 100 years or more, self-interested, utility-maximizing, “economic man” was the centerpiece of mainstream economic theory.

But also in 1871, Darwin published his Descent of Man, with its evolutionary explanation of cooperative solidarity and morality, which took over one hundred years to be confirmed broadly by theoretical and empirical research. In that same year, Darwin had provided an evolutionary vindication of Smith’s view of human motivation. But it was ignored by most economists.

It is one of the great ironies of history that portraits of Smith and Darwin appear respectively on £10 and £20 banknotes in the UK. I do not think that these designs were intended to remind us that moral and evolutionary considerations are central to our understanding of a money-driven economy. But they are.…

When morality is ignored as not being substantive, then the result is that morality is equated with legality, so that if it is legal it is moral. Powerful elites then use their power and influence to shape the law so that what society regards as being immoral or unethical is made legal and there is not penalty involved in acting immorally or illegally. Elites are famously shameless, so that reputational stricture does not apply to them or restrain their behavior.

Evonomics

Why We Need Adam Smith and Charles Darwin to Fix the Global Economy
Geoffrey Hodgson | research professor at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, England

George Monbiot — We’re Not as Selfish as Economists Think We Are. Here’s the Proof.

In complex adaptive systems, optimization involves adaptation through feedback and learning, as well as taking into account return on coordination. This happens naturally and spontaneously not only cognitively but also affectively since it a positive evolutionary trait. Evolutionary success involves a combination of competition and cooperation through coordination, as in teamwork. Homo socialis is the reality rather than homo economicus.

Evonomics
We’re Not as Selfish as Economists Think We Are. Here’s the Proof.

George Monbiot

Herbert Gintis — How to Synthesize New Economics with Traditional Economics

There have been two major contributions to economic theory in my lifetime. One is behavioral economics. The other is evolutionary economics. The revolutions induced by these new approaches are by no means complete. Their ramifications are still being worked out in the professional economics journals.

Behavioral economics abandons the traditional notion that rational choice alone can explain human behavior in favor of patterns of choice that are inferred from laboratory and field studies of actual human subjects. Evolutionary economics views the economy as a dynamical evolving system that can be modeled using the combined tools of economic and biological theory. Evolutionary economics treats individuals as the product of their biological and social history, and so fits in well with behavioral economics.

Many behavioral and evolutionary economists consider themselves allies in a battle against the principles of traditional economic theory, and many supporters of traditional economic theory share this mind set—except that they are on the other side of the conflict. This oppositional mind-set is profoundly incorrect and leads to serious errors both in developing economic theory and presenting it to the general public.

The most creative behavioral and evolutionary economists remain inspired by the successes of, and consider their work as extensions of traditional economic theory. The most creative supporters of traditional economic theory, in turn, embrace behavioral and evolutionary perspectives and build on its insights.
In this article I will suggest the proper way to treat the new economic theory in relation to the old. I encourage readers to offer significant critiques of or additions to my comments.…

Useful summary.

Examines market failures, which is really the way to approach economics rather than to assume general equilibrium precludes market failures or make then irrelevant "in the long run." Market failures sufficiently large and persistent have not only economic but also social and political consequences. Therefore, understanding and reducing market failure is of the highest priority.

Evonomics
How to Synthesize New Economics with Traditional Economics
Herbert Gintis

Noah Smith — New paradigms in economic theory? Not so fast.

I've recently read two big-think piece about new paradigms for economic theory - this one by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, and this one by venture capitalist and activist Nick Hanauer and speechwriter Eric Liu. Is economic theory due for a paradigm shift? Maybe, but I don't think we know what the new paradigm will be yet.…

But I think that more important than any of these theoretical changes - or the evolutionary theory suggested by Wilson - is the empirical revolution in econ. Ten million cool theories are of little use beyond the "gee whiz" factor if you can't pick between them. Until recently, econ was fairly bad about agreeing on rigorous ways to test theories against reality, so paradigms came and went like fashions and fads. Now that's changing. To me, that seems like a much bigger deal than any new theory fad, because it offers us a chance to find enduringly reliable theories that won't simply disappear when people get bored or political ideologies change.

So the shift to empiricism away from philosophy supersedes all other real and potential shifts in economic theory. Would-be econ revolutionaries absolutely need to get on board with the new empiricism, or else risk being left behind. 

To simplify Thomas Kuhn's view of paradigm shift, it's the anomalies. As results that counter the normal paradigm build up, or results that the normal paradigm cannot explain, interest grows in finding a new paradigm instead of either ignoring the anomalies or patching up theory ad hoc.

Economics seems to be approaching that point after the inability of the normal paradigm to foresee the onset of the GFC and its subsequent inability to recommend effective policy for recovery. Now the existing paradigm is trying to account for a "new normal," and many are getting restless over it.

According to Kuhn, such are the conditions under which paradigm shift is likely to occur — if creativity can be summoned to develop a new framework as a better way of asking questions and getting answers that not only compute but are corroborated.

Noahpinion
New paradigms in economic theory? Not so fast.
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University

David Sloan Wilson — From Political Gridlock to Scientific Progress. The Promise of Evonomics

Evolutionists who take an interest in economics often fall along a political spectrum, just like other folks. Right-leaning evolutionists include Larry Arnhart (Darwinian Conservatism), Michael Shermer (The Mind of the Market), and Matt Ridley, whose book The Evolution of Everything (not to be confused with my own Evolution for Everyone) is hot off the press. Left-leaning evolutionists include Herbert Gintis (The Bounds of Reason), Samuel Bowles (A Cooperative Species), Lynn Stout (Cultivating Conscience), and Peter Singer (The Most Good You Can Do). Evolutionists such as Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) and Robert Frank (The Darwin Economy ) hold down the center and offer interesting commentary on the left-right divide.…

“Evonomics” stands for the “Next Evolution of Economics” but to me it represents the field of economics resting on the foundations of evolution and complexity science. It’s similar to “evolutionary economics,” but the two terms have different histories.

“Evolutionary economics” came into use in the 1980s with books such as Nelson and Winter’s An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, while “Evonomics” was coined by Michael Shermer in a 2007 Scientific American article to describe how the cultural evolution of stuff in modern life is like biological evolution.…

As a branch of evolutionary science, evolutionary economics is a scientific discipline. This might seem to go without saying, but a lot of economic discourse — much of it intertwined with political discourse — is not scientific. My own path to studying economics is worth relating on this point.…

As I describe in my book The Neighborhood Project, this was like the gentle hobbit Frodo making his way toward Mordor. I entered a world of unsurpassed strangeness, dominated by a body of thought—so-called orthodox economic theory—that bore no resemblance to reality whatsoever. Its assumptions about human preferences and abilities were absurd, as a branch of economics called behavioral economics had no trouble showing. Behavioral economics was called “heterodox,” along with a ragtag collection of other schools of thought that included evolutionary economics and ecological economics. In my world, ecology, evolution, and behavior had become fused into a single discipline often labeled by the acronym EEB. Nothing like that was occurring in the world of economics.…

What does it mean to function in scientific mode? First, there must be a serviceable theoretical framework, whose assumptions at least crudely approximate the object of study; in this case human economic systems. Second, it must be possible to formulate alternative hypotheses about any given aspect of economic systems that can be tested with empirical data. If we can’t go back and forth between hypothesis formation and testing, then we can’t make scientific progress.

It is not required for the scientists to be unbiased, which would be impossible in any case. Scientists are flesh-and-blood people like everyone else. Some will be politically left-leaning or right-leaning and this will cause them to propose different hypotheses (e.g., concerning the ability of price systems to regulate economic activities for the common good). The difference is that when people operate in scientific mode, they are forced to change their minds when their hypotheses are rejected on the basis of empirical data or logical contradiction. Science progresses, unlike political gridlock.…

This makes me confident that Evonomics will not be a merely another way for people to spin their political biases without any resolution. Evonomics.com looks forward to featuring the views of anyone who has become knowledgable about modern evolutionary and complexity science and abides by the rules of scientific discourse, no matter what their political leanings. This is what motivated Robert Kadar and Joe Brewer, with my wholehearted support, to form a collaborative network of people creating and curating content, and hosting lively scientific debate. Let the best hypothesis win. If we can’t change our minds on the basis of empirical evidence, then shame on us.

Evonomics
From Political Gridlock to Scientific Progress. The Promise of Evonomics
David Sloan Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

David Sloan Wilson — Love Hayek, Love Darwin

It is not an exaggeration to say that as far as his premises are concerned, Hayek is one of the fathers of Evonomics. So is Thorstein Veblen, who titled an 1898 article “Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?”

The conclusions that Hayek draws from his premises are another matter. In my humble opinion, they require updating. But there’s no point discussing the conclusions that follow from a set of premises unless the premises are first accepted. Discussions centered on Hayek are therefore discussions centered on economics from an evolutionary perspective.…

A different view of Hayek. To be continued.

Evonomics
Love Hayek, Love Darwin

David Sloan Wilson | Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

See also

Why Darwinian Economics Is so Threatening to Libertarians

George Cooper

What’s the Secret to Joining the “Rich-Country” Club?

Steve Roth

David Sloan Wilson — A good social Darwinism [and much more]

Evolution has changed all we know about how humans behave, compete and co-operate. When will economics catch up?

Shreds neoclassical assumptions.

Aeon
A good social Darwinism
David Sloan Wilson | Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology, Binghamton University
(h/t Gavin Kennedy at Adam Smith's Lost Legacy)

Links at the bottom of the article leads links to limited time (six months) download of papers from the Journal Of Economic Behavior & Organization and This View of Life. Here is the lead in from This View of Life:

Q: How many economists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Zero. The invisible hand will do it.

Making jokes about economics is fun and easy. The field’s nickname is the ‘dismal science’. Type ‘economic jokes’ into Google and you will see 19.5 million hits, far more than other fields, and almost as many as for political jokes. Economics is the field that people love to hate.

Improving economics is much harder than making jokes. In a special issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, more than two dozen scholars from around the world have written 13 articles with the important and difficult goal of making economics better.
The title of the special issue is “Evolution as a General Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy.” This is a relatively novel approach and deserves some discussion.

The standard economic paradigm is the neoclassical model. People know what makes them happy and are good at making decisions to accomplish their goals. Furthermore, neoclassical theory has been used to support free market policies by arguing that self-interested, rational actors lead to ‘optimal’ social outcomes, when optimal is defined in a particular way 

“People are rational and greed is good” would be a lay summary of neoclassical economics.

Just reading that sentence probably makes many people’s blood boil. The list of critics of neoclassical economic is long and distinguished. Within the citadels of economic power, however, only one critique has made significant inroads. This successful critique is the behavioral economic field founded by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and most forcefully advanced by Professor Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago.

Professor Thaler sums up behavioral economics by saying that people are ‘nicer and dumber’ than economists assume.

The authors of the special issue of JEBO believe that evolutionary theory is required to improve economics. In 1973, the famous biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, wrote, “Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts-some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.”

Paraphrasing Dobzhanksy, we, the authors of these articles on economics and evolution, argue that economics without evolution is a pile of sundry facts-some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.

Furthermore, these articles go beyond criticism to specific areas. In many cases, the authors have devoted decades to these topics, and are recognized global leaders. The techniques range from theoretical to experimental to simulation. The species covered include humans, non-human primates, and many other animals.

In order to make the issue accessible, This View of Life is pleased to provide short summaries of each article that link to the full-length articles, which the Evolution Institute has paid to make free online for a period of six months.

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION SPECIAL ISSUE

“Evolution as a General Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy,” Special issue editors: David Sloan Wilson, John M. Gowdy, J. Barkley Rosser



This supplementary issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is based on a collaborative project between the Evolution Institute and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center that started in 2009 with a NESCent catalysis meeting titled “The Nature of Regulation: How Evolution Can Inform the Regulation of Large-scale Human Social Interactions”. The meeting led to a 2-year project on integrating economic and evolutionary theory. This project used NESCent’s working group rubric to organize three workshops, whose participants were drawn from a larger advisory group. Other outputs of the project include a white paper submitted to the National Science Foundation and a final workshop titled“The Science-to-Narrative Chain”, which examines how to create a new public narrative based on the evolutionary paradigm.

Supplemental material can also be found at our online magazine: This View of Life

1)Wilson, D. S., Gowdy, J, Rosser, B. Jr. (2013). Rethinking Economics from an Evolutionary Perspective. An Editorial

2) Wilson, D. S., & Gowdy, J. (2013). Evolution as a General Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy.

Role in issue: First lead article. Describes how evolution functions as a general theoretical framework in the biological sciences and considers four reasons why evolution might not add value to the study of human-related subjects.

3) Gowdy, J., Dollimore, D., Witt, U., & Wilson, D. S. (2013). Economic Cosmology and the Evolutionary Challenge.

Role in issue: Second lead article. Describes how modern disciplines such as economics and evolution reflect ancient cosmologies and how advances in evolutionary science can help economics overcome some of its outdated assumptions.

4) Wilson, D. S., Ostrom, E., & Cox, M. (2013). Generalizing the Core Design Principles for the Efficacy of Groups.

Role in issue: Shows how the design principles for the efficacy of common-pool resource groups, for which Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, can be generalized from an evolutionary perspective and used as a practical framework for improving the efficacy of real-world groups. Also serves as a tutorial for multilevel selection theory, which plays an important role in some of the other articles.

5) Witt, U., & Schwesinger, G. (2013). Phylogenetic footprints in organizational behavior.

Role in issue: Explains modern social organizations, including firms, as a product of biocultural co-evolution. The authors have backgrounds in economics, nicely complementing the article by Stoelhorst and Richerson.

6) Stoelhorst, J. W., & Richerson, P. J. (2013). A Naturalistic Theory of Economic Organizations.

Role in issue: Explains modern social organizations, including firms, as a product of biocultural co-evolution. The first author has a business school background and the second author is one of the major figures in cultural evolutionary theory, nicely complementing the article by Witt and Schwesinger

7) Manapat, M., Nowak, M., & Rand, D. (2003). Information, Irrationality and the Evolution of Trust.

Role in issue: Focuses on the important topic of trust and illustrates the role of analytical models in evolutionary science relevant to economics and public policy.

8) Wilson, J., Yan, L., & Hill, J. (2013). Costly information and the Evolution of Self-organization in a Small, Complex, Economy.

Role in issue: Describes a real-world application of the evolutionary perspective to an economic system and illustrates the role of computer simulation modeling from an evolutionary and complex systems perspective.

9) Gowdy, J., Rosser, B. Jr. & Roy, L. (2013). The Evolution of Hyperbolic Discounting: Implications for Truly Social Valuation of the Future.

Role in issue: Addresses a fundamental topic in economics and public policy from an integrated ultimate and proximate evolutionary perspective.

10) DeAngelo, G., & Brosnan, S. (2013). The Importance of Risk Tolerance and Knowledge when Considering the Evolution of Inequity Responses Across the Primates.

Role in issue: Focuses on the important subject of inequity responses and illustrates the importance of cross-species comparison, which is novel for much of the economic and policy literatures.

11) Burnham, T. (2013). Caveman Economics: Toward a neo-Darwinian Synthesis of Neoclassical and Behavioral Economics.

Role in issue: Focuses on the concept of mismatch, whereby genetic and cultural adaptations to previous environments become dysfunctional in current environments.

12) Johnson, D., Price, M., & Van Vugt, M. (2013). Darwin’s Invisible Hand: The Evolution of the Market Competition, Evolution, and the Firm.

Role in issue: Applies multilevel selection theory to the selection of behavioral and organizational practices within and among firms, reaching a different set of conclusions than standard economic views of the firm.

13) Mullins, D.A., Whitehouse, H. & Atkinson, Q. D., (2013). The Role of Writing and Record Keeping in the Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation.

Role in issue: Takes a long-term cultural evolutionary view on the structure of human social organizations as corporate units, with implications for current and future organizations.

14) Biglan, A., & Cody, C. (2013). Integrating the Human Sciences to Evolve Effective Policies.

Role in issue: Reviews the fields of public health, prevention science and applied behavioral analysis, which have a proven ability change behavioral and cultural practices in individuals, small groups, and large populations. Also emphasizes the importance of prosociality for promoting human welfare at all scales, which stands in contrast to the individual focus of orthodox economic theory. This article is important to underscore the fact that evolution functions as a general theoretical framework for all forms of policy, not just economics.

And a reminder that David Sloan Wilson wrote a thirteen part series on evolution and economics, "Economics and Evolution as Different Paradigms" Series.

Evolutionary theory and evolutionary economics promise to be a large chunk of the emerging new paradigm of economics, along with monetary economics, energy economics, environmental economics, and ecological economics, along with the life and social sciences. Mechanism will be replaced by organicism, and atomism by general system theory, of which economist Kenneth Boulding was a founding developer and laid the groundwork.