Recent Evolutionary Theorizing About Economic Change

Abstract

This famous passage from Marshall’s Principles of Economics (it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907) nicely brings out two issues, which are as germane to economics today as they were when Marshall wrote. The first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of “equilibrium”. The other is the appeal that “biological conceptions3x201D; have for many economists, particularly when their focus is on economic change.