15 - Does evolutionary theory give comfort or inspiration to economics?

Summary

To some economists, evolutionary theory looks like a tempting cure for what ails their subject. To others, it looks like part of a powerful defense of the status quo in economic theory. I think that Darwinian theory is a remarkably inappropriate model, metaphor, inspiration, or theoretical framework for economic theory. The theory of natural selection shares few of its strengths and most of its weaknesses with neoclassical theory, and provides no help in any attempt to frame more powerful alternatives to that theory. In this chapter, I explain why this is so.

I begin with a sketch of the theory of natural selection, some of its strengths and some of its weaknesses. Then I consider how the theory might be supposed to play a role in the improvement of our understanding of economic processes. I conclude with a brief illustration of the problems of instantiating a theory from one domain in another quite different one, employing the most extensive of attempts to develop an evolutionary theory in economics. My pessimistic conclusions reflect a concern shared with economists who have sought comfort or inspiration from biological theory. The concern is to vindicate received theory or to underwrite new theory against a reasonable standard of predictive success. Few of these economists have noticed what the opponents of such a standard for economic theory have seen, that evolutionary theory is itself bereft of strong predictive power (see McCloskey 1985, 15).