Economics and Biology

Economics and Biology PDF Author: Geoffrey Martin Hodgson
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
This is a collection of essays on the relationship between economics and biology. As the limitations of the mechanistic metaphor in economics are increasingly recognized, this volume explores the potential for the use of evolutionary and other ideas from the science of biology.

Economics and Biology

Economics and Biology PDF Author: Geoffrey Martin Hodgson
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
This is a collection of essays on the relationship between economics and biology. As the limitations of the mechanistic metaphor in economics are increasingly recognized, this volume explores the potential for the use of evolutionary and other ideas from the science of biology.

The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology

The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology PDF Author: John Komlos
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199389292
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology provides an extensive and insightful overview of how economic conditions affect human well-being and how human health influences economic outcomes. The book addresses both macro and micro factors, as well as their interaction, providing new understanding of complex relationships and developments in economic history and economic dynamics. Among the topics explored is how variation in height, whether over time, among different socioeconomic groups, or in different locations, is an important indicator of changes in economic growth and economic development, levels of economic inequality, and economic opportunities for individuals.

Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics

Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics PDF Author: Hsiang-Ke Chao
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400724543
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology.

Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic

Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic PDF Author: Armin W. Schulz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000067238
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book is the first systematic treatment of the philosophy of science underlying evolutionary economics. It does not advocate an evolutionary approach towards economics, but rather assesses the epistemic value of appealing to evolutionary biology in economics more generally. The author divides work in evolutionary economics into three distinct, albeit related, forms: a structural form, an evidential form, and a heuristic form. He then analyzes five examples of work in evolutionary economics falling under these three forms. For the structural form, he examines the parallelism between natural selection and economic decision making, and the parallelism between natural selection and market competition. For the evidential form, he looks at the relationship between animal and human economic decision making, and the evolutionary explanation of diversity in human economic decision making. Finally, for the heuristic form, he focuses on the plausibility of equilibrium modeling in evolutionary ecology and economics. In this way, he shows that linking evolutionary biology and economics can make for a powerful methodological tool that can enable progress in our understanding of various economics questions. Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, evolutionary biology, and economics.

Nature

Nature PDF Author: Geerat Vermeij
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826497
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth unites three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle. Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members. Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that emerged at life's origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful living things.

Foundations of Complex-system Theories

Foundations of Complex-system Theories PDF Author: Sunny Y. Auyang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521778268
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Analyzes approaches to the study of complexity in the physical, biological, and social sciences.

Dynamical Systems

Dynamical Systems PDF Author: Pierre N.V. Tu
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662027798
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Dynamic tools of analysis and modelling are increasingly used in Economics and Biology and have become more and more sophisticated in recent years, to the point where the general students without training in Dynamic Systems (DS) would be at a loss. No doubt they are referred to the original sources of mathematical theorems used in the various proofs, but the level of mathematics is generally beyond them. Students are thus left with the burden of somehow understanding advanced mathematics by themselves, with· very little help. It is to these general students, equipped only with a modest background of Calculus and Matrix Algebra that this book is dedicated. It aims at providing them with a fairly comprehensive box of dynamical tools they are expected to have at their disposal. The first three Chapters start with the most elementary notions of first and second order Differential and Difference Equations. For these, no matrix theory and hardly any calculus are needed. Then, before embarking on linear and nonlinear DS, a review of some Linear Algebra in Chapter 4 provides the bulk of matrix theory required for the study of later Chapters. Systems of Linear Differ ential Equations (Ch. 5) and Difference Equations (Ch. 6) then follow to provide students with a good background in linear DS, necessary for the subsequent study of nonlinear systems. Linear Algebra, reviewed in Ch. 4, is used freely in these and subsequent chapters to save space and time.

Economics As an Evolutionary Science

Economics As an Evolutionary Science PDF Author: Arthur E. Gandolfi
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412822152
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
A synthesis of economics and evolution. The authors suggest an expanded definition of "fitness", emphasizing not only the importance of reproduction and the quality of offspring, but also taking into account the ability of human beings to provide material wealth to their children.

Ideas in Economics

Ideas in Economics PDF Author: R. D. Collison Black
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780389206446
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Papers presented at the 1985 meeting of the Section F of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the University of Strathclyde. Includes bibliographies and index.

Economics in Nature

Economics in Nature PDF Author: Ronald Noë
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521003995
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Studies of sexual selection, interspecific mutualism, and intraspecific cooperation show that individuals exchange commodities to their mutual benefit. The exchange values of commodities are a source of conflict, and behavioral mechanisms such as partner choice and contest between competitors determines the composition of trading pairs or groups. These "biological markets" can be examined to gain a better understanding of the underlying principles of evolutionary ecology. In this volume scientists from different disciplines combine insights from economics, evolutionary biology, and the social sciences to look at comparative aspects of economic behavior in humans and other animals.