The importance of knowledge - more in particular of its creation and diffusion - for (regional) economic development is widely acknowledged. Knowledge is one of the most important sources of economic development. With an evolutionary perspective, the process of knowledge diffusion can be...

The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at the relation between human intentionality and design on the one side and the "blind" forces of evolution on the other. Specifically, I discuss two issues that Ulrich Witt has raised in recent publications, namely, first, the issue of whether...

This paper discusses how the results of simulation models can be made more reliable and the method of simulating therefore more widely applicable. We suggested to calibrate simulation models empirically and developed a methodology based on Critical Realism in order to so. We suggested combining...

Growth dynamics and structural change are the two central features of variation / selection processes within populations. This paper explores them in terms of three themes, or sets of accounts, namely Logistic Growth Accounting, Competition Accounting and the Price Theorem. The accounting...

The process of modern growth is different from the kind of growth experienced in Europe and the Orient before 1800 in that it is sustained. Whereas in the premodern past, growth spurts would always run into negative feedback, no such ceiling seems to have been limiting the economic expansion of...

In spite of its checkered intellectual history, and in spite of the myriad proposals of alternative models that claim to account for the broad range of human behavior and to dispense with the need for selection above the organism level, a multilevel selection framework remains the only coherent...

The last quarter century has seen a renaissance of the proposal that the processes Darwin put forth as driving biological evolution also provide a plausible theoretical framework for analysis of the evolution of human culture. Modern proponents of the idea that human culture evolves through...