Competition between Firms in Economic Evolution: Its Characteristics and Differences to the Biological Sphere

Su, Tong-Yaa (2016): Competition between Firms in Economic Evolution: Its Characteristics and Differences to the Biological Sphere.

Abstract

This paper investigates the characteristics of competition among firms from an evolutionary perspective. It develops a coherent approach to economic competition that incorporates two kinds of evolutionary concepts currently used and emerging at the intersection of social sciences, including economics, and biology: Darwinian thinking as well as the naturalistic approach. Inspired by evolutionary theory, the intersection commonly captures concepts that make metaphorical use of Darwinian ideas – these concepts draw on an analogy construction to the biological sphere. As a result in this paper, different characteristics of economic competition may be analogically described by different forms of biological selection, e.g., genetic group selection. However, selection processes do not only act on genes, but also on culture. By considering the naturalistic approach, differences to the biological sphere are revealed. The crux of this paper is the deduction that competition between firms is a form of cultural group selection in economic evolution.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Competition; Evolutionary Theory; Selection Processes; Continuity Hypothesis
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B52 - Institutional ; Evolutionary; D - Microeconomics > D4 - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design > D49 - Other

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