Paper presented at the Conference on Economics and Evolution, Arranged by the Belgian-Dutch Association for Post-Keynesian Economics, Utrecht, 10 November 1995

By Esben Sloth Andersen
Dept. of Business Studies, Aalborg University, @esa.business.auc.dk

The relationship between Schumpeter and modern evolutionary modelling often appears to be based on a few Schumpeterian catchwords rather than a thorough examination of the Schumpeter's core problems and solutions. Beneath this superficial relationship there is, however, deeper congruence. Like the modern modellers, Schumpeter emphasised the conceptual and formal tools for expressing complex evolutionary processes, he preferred discrete to continuous change, he tried to introduce the evolutionary problems both in relation to standard economics and to a wealth of new ideas, and first and foremost he took the stand for the study of broad set of evolutionary processes at a time when the overwhelming viewpoint was that this beyound the realm of economics.

The propositions of a tool problem for evolutionary thought and of the ability of evolutionary modellers to overcome this problem help to clarify many of the real and apparent contradictions between Schumpeter and the model-building evolutionary economics. Section 2 examines how Schumpeter's evolutionary analysis was influenced by two factors: the anti-evolutionary context in which it was developed and the inadequate analytic tools available to him. These backgrounds help to explain many of Schumpeter's paradoxical statements as well as his affinity to Walras and his conflict with Marshall. In section 3 the core elements of the contribution of Nelson and Winter and other evolutionary modellers are treated as a potential solution to SchumpeterÕs tool problem and to the SchumpeterÐMarshall conflict on the character of the evolutionary process. This is followed up in section 4 which presents a sketch of a combined (post-) Schumpeterian-Marshallian strategy for evolutionary modelling.