Individualistic Foundations of Evolutionary Economics
Witt’s 1987 German-language book "Individualistische Grundlagen der evolutorischen Ökonomik" is the starting point of an independent line of evolutionary economic thought. The book developed an ambitious vision of evolutionary economics as a general approach to the study of emergent novelty and dynamic change in economic behavior. In contrast to the Neo-Schumpeterian approach pioneered by Nelson and Winter (1982), which focused on industrial economics and drew its primary inspiration from the Carnegie School of organizational theory, Witt (1987) was strongly influenced by behaviorist and cognitive psychology, sociobiology, and also Austrian economics. Witt provided a multi-faceted account of individual economic agency based on inherited traits as well as a variety of learning processes. The 1987 book - which was derived from Witt’s Habilitation thesis - thus contains the nucleus of what Witt subsequently termed the “Continuity Hypothesis”.
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