The Future of Evolutionary Economics Is in a Vision from the Past

This essay comments on discussions of the future of evolutionary economics by Winter (2014) and Witt (2014). I agree with their assessment of evolutionary economics as a theoretically fragmented field that has had little success in effecting a paradigm shift in mainstream economics. However, I question if such a paradigm shift should be the primary goal of evolutionary economists. I argue that evolutionary economists could increase their impact if they would be willing and able to recast themselves as evolutionary social scientists. This was the vision for economics that Veblen held out more than a century ago. I lay out the theoretical building blocks for realizing this vision available today.