A micro-meso-macro perspective on the methodology of evolutionary economics: Integrating history, simulation and econometrics

We develop a new methodology for evolutionary economic modelling, based upon the ‘micro-meso-macro’ analytical framework for dealing with behaviour in complex economic systems. This new methodology involves a combination of computational, historical and econometric methods. It is argued that this integrated methodology is superior to the theoretically restricted simulation/calibration methodology found in new classical macroeconomics and to the relatively unrestricted methodology found in much of agent-based modelling in evolutionary economics. It is also viewed as much more useful than the conventional ‘vector error correction’ econometric methodology when the evolutionary economic modeller is faced with nonlinear time paths and associations between observed variables.