Pier Paolo Saviotti (INRA – GAEL)

Innovation, Complexity and Economic Evolution: from Theory to Policy

Abstract. Discuss the possible and desirable future development of evolutionary economics if it wants to transform itself from the specialized economics of innovation into a general-purpose economic theory capable to compete with neoclassical economics. To achieve this objective, I maintain that it needs to incorporate new aspects of socioeconomic reality, such as institutions of all types, including technical, scientific, and political. These different components of our socioeconomic system (SES) interact giving rise to coevolution and to complex behaviour. Amongst the main aspects of evolutionary economics that differentiate it radically from neoclassical economics there are: 1) The permanently dynamic and unstable character of the world SES; 2) the presence of structure and order in the world SES; 3) the interactivity of the different components of the world SES; 4) the changing heterogeneity of the world SES. Consequently, evolutionary economics can provide policy implications at least as interesting as those of neoclassical economics. Thus, as my book Innovation, Complexity and Economic Evolution: from Theory to Policy, London, Routledge (2023), argues, evolutionary economics must become evolutionary political economy.