Schumpeter's Evolutionary Economics

Schumpeterrs"s Evolutionary Economicsfills the void of analysis and serves as a standard reference work on this pioneering thinker by introducing novel interpretations of his five major books and tracing the development of his intellectual framework. Schumpeterrs"s first German book on the nature of theoretical economics (1908) is still untranslated, but it demonstrates how he developed his evolutionary research programme by studying the inherent limitations of equilibrium economics. He presented core results on economic evolution and extended evolutionary analysis to all social sciences in the first German edition ofThe Theory of Economic Development(1912). He made a partial reworking of the theory of economic evolution in later editions, and this reworking was continued inBusiness Cycles(1939). Here Schumpeter also tried to handle the statistical and historical evidence on the waveform evolution of the capitalist economy.Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy(1942) modified the model of economic evolution and added evolutionary contributions to other social sciences. Finally,History of Economic Analysis, published posthumously, was based on his evolutionary theory of the history of economics. Andersen's analysis of Schumpeter's five books expounds the progress he made within his research programme, and examines his lack of satisfactory tools for evolutionary analysis. In so doing it places our understanding of Schumpeter on a new and firmer footing; it also suggests how modern evolutionary economics can relate to his work.

Esben Sloth Andersen is Professor of Evolutionary Economics in the Department of Business Studies, Aalborg University. He teaches general economics and evolutionary economics in BA, MA, and PhD programmes. Andersen is also a member of the department's IKE Group on Innovation, Knowledge and Economic dynamics, and of the Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics (DRUID).