‘Luck is a talent.’ –William Somerset Maugham
Most of my interest in the use of biology in economics concerns humans being subject to the forces of selection like any other biological organism. With this starting point, it is natural to pull across many of the tools, models and methods of analysis that evolutionary biologists use.
Sometimes those models and tools are of value without the biological underpinnings. Evolutionary economics is one of the major areas where this is done, with the concepts of selection applied at the level of firms.
Another instance of this crossover was in an article published three weeks ago by Andrew Haldane and Robert May, who have proposed that analysis of complexity and stability in ecosystems (dating from the 1970s) is of some use in examining financial systems.
photo { Justin Fantl }
