The rule approach in evolutionary economics: A methodological template for empirical research

<Para ID="Par1">Dopfer and Potts (<CitationRef CitationID="CR16">2008</CitationRef>) have proposed a new analytic foundation to evolutionary economics based on the unified rule approach. While they contend that their approach is ontologically and analytically coherent and useful, scholars sympathetic with it, e.g., Ostrom and Basurto (<CitationRef CitationID="CR27">2011</CitationRef>), have called for further methodological and empirical specification. In the same vein, this paper seeks to develop the Dopfer-Potts framework by proposing an analytic methodology to translate their rule-based approach into an operational method for identifying and testing hypotheses that relate to rules. It does so by defining a methodology connecting explanandum (response rule) and explanantia (factor rules) at the same level of rules. The concept of a ‘savings rule’ serves as a roving example that later is extended into a case study. The paper offers a methodological template for applied evolutionary analysis in economics. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014