Complexity And The Economy

‘. . . this important volume makes an invaluable contribution to the knowledge economy. An essential read for economists, this book will also find widespread appeal amongst scholars of management, cultural studies and geography.’
– EAEPE Newsletter

Complexity and the Economy brings together a range of perspectives from internationally-renowned scholars. The book surveys conceptual approaches to understanding complexity as a key subject in evolutionary and political economy.

The authors examine the causes and consequences of complexity among the broadly economic phenomena of firms, industries and socio-economic policy. The book makes a valuable contribution to the increasingly prominent subject of complexity, especially for those whose interests include evolutionary, behavioural, political and social approaches to understanding economics and economic phenomena. Complexity has become something of a leitmotif among scholars with these interests. This book contributes specific, distinctive and policy-oriented elaborations, criticisms, applications and analyses of economic phenomena as interpreted complexly.

Drawing together strands of research with the aim of applying complexity theory, this book will be of great interest to researchers of political economy and evolutionary economics.

Contents:
Introduction: The Scope of Complexity and its Implications for Policy
John Finch and Magali Orillard
Part I: The Development of Complexity Perspectives
1. Complexity and the Economy: An Interview with W. Brian Arthur
W. Brian Arthur interviewed by Robert Delorme and Geoffrey M. Hodgson
2. Individual and Aggregate Behaviour: Of Ants and Men
Alan Kirman
3. Complexity Needs Strategy First Rather than Simplification: Why I am a Satisficing and Unrepentant Simonian
Jean-Louis Le Moigne
Part II: Theoretical Perspectives on Complexity
4. From Possession to Property: Preferences and the Role of Culture
Uta-Maria Niederle
5. Landscape of a Prolific Convergence: Fernand Braudel and Institutional Economics
Eyüp Özveren
6. The Naturalist View of Universal Darwinism: An Application to the Evolutionary Theory of the Firm
J.W. Stoelhorst
Part III: Complexity in Organizations
7. Trust and Transaction Costs
Alexander Lascaux
8. Trust in Post-Bureaucratic Organizations
Gráinne Collins
9. Two Complex Lighthouse Production Systems: The Mixed English and the Centralized French Systems
Elodie Bertrand
Part IV: Complexity, Strategies and Policies
10. Complexity and Industry Evolution: New Insights from an Old Industry
Virginia Acha and Stefano Brusoni
11. The Codification of Technological Knowledge, Technological Complexity, and the Division of Innovative Labour: A Case from the Semiconductor Industry in the 1990s
Norio Tokumaru
12. Technology Strategy and Knowledge Dynamics: The Case of Biotechnology
Lionel Nesta and Ludovic Dibiaggio
13. Comparing Post-Socialist Employment ‘Informalization’ in the Czech Republic and Hungary
Cristina Matos
Index