Session 1 Evolutionary Economics
1. Evolutionary Theorizing in Economics Nelson & Winter
-Nelson and Winter (1982) How popular this book is? Exp in recent years, in the field of strategic management
-Who trained Nelson and Winter? Koopmans, March and Simon
Koopmans, 1957. Three essays on the state of economic science.
March and Simons1958. Organizations.
-it does not fit into any of the paradigms
Thomas Kuhn, 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions.
Uncertainty: TCE
Firm evolution, dynamic capabilities: RBV
-Schumpeterian competition
Unit of analysis: org/industry level
R&D lead to innovation
Explain long-term evolution of industries (perfect, non-perfect)
Returns on innovation
Sustainability of competition
Entrepreneurial start-up
Distribution of firm size
Market structure
-contrasting: Science-based regime/ trial-&-error cumulative learning
Tacit knowledge
-When neoclassical economics meet evolutionary theory (4 criteria for converge):
-sufficient variety
-behavioral continuity
-profit -induced growth
-limited path dependence (limited path independence?) half-full/half empty glass
-evolutionary studies in general
DV: pattern of entry/exit, how technology changes over time
New product, firm survival
Population (birth/dearth rate), demographic, funeral to funeral ?
-Organizational routine is the analogue of individual skill
Routine is take the complexity out and keep it functional, consistent efficiency driven
Sociologist and psychologist view routine as simplification, mindless, lazyness
To read:
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Nelson and Winter, 1982) Chapter 1-5
2. Evolutionary Trajectories in Petroleum Firm R&D
Helfat (1994)
Empirical research
Persistent differences between firms
Adjustment costs and adaptive expectation
R &D/sales ratio
Helfat 1994 take-away
strong correlation with previous years
Heterogeneity across firms
Path dependency
Empirical methodology
How does this (fail to) differ from institutional theory?
DiMaggio and Power (1988) maximizing legitimacy
What is the DV?
Economic approach to evolutionary modeling
Profits
RBV and TCA is not effective in explaining profitability
Long-term sustainability
3. Dominance by birthright
Kepper and Simons, 2000
-Klepper (1999)
IO: price takers, fixed quality
Is Oligopoly natural function of markets or problematic?
-weak empirical constructs
-role of management?
-Financial slack?
-generalizability: only for R&D driven industry? High tech industry that requires innovation?
What about bicycles and cars?
-multi-period study
-Institutional blind: U.S vs Japan?
-What about technology breakthrough?
5. Vertical (dis)integration of computer firms
Malerba et al , 2008
Computer simulation: assumptions; as simple as possible
This paper is unnecessarily complex!
Wrap up & take-away
Methods
Helfat (1994) Tabular comparisons tobit regression, OLS
Klepper & Simons (2000) historical analysis Cox proportional hazards, OLS
Malerba et al. (2008) historical analysis, simulation
Premises
Bounded rationality (longitudinal data)
Sufficient variety( multi-level, heterogeneity in capabilities (same industry environment, firms end up different in their individual characteristics)
Behavioral continuity (time consistency)
Profit-induced growth (reaction, selection) process
Limited path (in) dependence
|