Evolutionary Economics

This textbook presents a new way to visualize or imagine the evolutionary architecture of economics, to judge both its practical outcomes and its ultimate value. Evolutionary economics employs an Aristotelian architecture. The cognitive value of this imagination[H1] must be directly relevant to the evolutionary theory and practice of designing the architecture of the economic system. Mainstream economics completely ignores design value in order to concentrate on the ideal, Platonic vision of the economy. The current system is no longer one that converges on a constant entity, because the system is constantly evolving. The advent of the digital economy is an indispensable next step, and computational power and algorithmic rationality are increasingly dominating the economic system—and complicating it. In today’s society, neither fault nor malice matters in the algorithmic or human system. There is little room left for the effective working of human reason. Correspondingly, the meanings of money, exchange, the market system, auctions, production, consumption, and the currency transaction system are poised to change. In most cases, there will be digital counterparts. A smart contract tied together with DLT, for example, makes it possible to design an economically well-behaved peer-to-peer (P2P) system, which ranges from the micromarket to the international currency transaction system. The introduction of this technology and its architectural design may suggest what a truly decentralized future entails. This change may also bring about a new understanding of existing social consensus and practice. Thus, the implementation of these considerations naturally leads to a new style of chapter structuring in this book, from the classical analytical approach to exploring computational methods and digital tools: in many cases, the problems presented in each chapter are combined with discussions of a respective computational method and its practical value. This book received the 2025 Society Award of Japan Association for Evolutionary Economics.