What is evolving in an economy?

Abstract

Modern evolutionary economics consists of several areas of research that differ significantly both in objects and research methods. One of these areas includes in its tasks the search for evidence that changes occurring in the economy are similar to those that were studied in Darwin’s theory of the living nature’s evolution. The article poses and solves two main tasks: firstly, to demonstrate the incorrectness of the interpretation of “Generalized Darwinism” as a model of evolution, the features of which coincide with the original Darwinian understanding, and, secondly, to show that in economics it is really possible to identify objects in which changes occur in a way close to what was discovered by Charles Darwin. It is shown that “Generalized Darwinism” is in fact a model of those types of evolution that are not Darwinian. At the same time, it has been demonstrated that in economics it is indeed possible to distinguish subsystems called “systems for creating product families,” whose properties are similar to fruit plants, and changes are carried out through natural Darwinian selection. The final part presents directions in which the use of the proposed approach can make a certain contribution to further development of evolutionary economics.