Chris Freeman’s concept of evolution : A critique of the misuse of biological analogies in macroeconomics

• Autor(a) principal: Louçã, Francisco
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Cabral, Ricardo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/26959
• topic: Evolutionary Economics; Christopher Freeman; Darwinism; Lamarck; Selection

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Chris Freeman, this paper presents an overview and analyzes his concept of economic evolution and his other contributions to the field of economics. Chris Freeman was one of the leading economists in the field of evolutionary economics during the second half of the twentieth century. Together with Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, as well as a number of other scholars, he contributed to establishing and developing a research program which extends from opening the black box of innovation through to the macroeconomic implications of long-term changes in the economy, technology and social organization. Additionally, Freeman suggested a new macroeconomic foundation for microeconomics – the unfinished legacy of our science. The chapter investigates how these foundations were developed as a critical view of inadequate metaphors from biology.