Man,Institutions and Bioeconomics

Abstract

Because bioeconomics is born of the interaction between the biological activity system and its socio-economic activity system, a holistic methodological approach is essential to study the relations between them. However, it must search for increasing levels of reductionism within each discipline to delve into the ultimate nature of each one of the intervening forces, whether economic or biological. This paper explores the economic forces.

Through the biological capacity to comprehend, man and by extension, society, accumulates knowledge, the fulcrum from which he is able to dominate over his natural habitat. From this ‘point d’appui’, man builds two basic tools to assist him in achieving the goal of bettering his social condition. On the one hand, he creates institutions that allow him to “live with others” and, on the other, he develops technology that helps him to “live better with others”. Institutions, also referred to as ‘social technology’, tend toward stability over time while technology or ‘material technology’, tends toward instability, which would suggest that, normally, the mechanics of change will originate in material technology and, from there, progress to social technology by way of the political market.

The level of progress and development attained depends on the quantity and rate of growth of knowledge applied by a society. In the process, man and his collectivity are forced to adopt new views of their environment through new shared mental models. The concurrence of equipment and political market will ultimately become the prime mover of institutional and economic change as well as change in mentality. Both technologies must keep on an adaptive course of stable evolution since discrepancies arising between them can cause tension between the various social groups. Adequate management of technological shock is essential to avoid extreme situations of social conflict. Herein lie the most important political decisions that a government must confront over the long term.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abramovitz

(1956). ‘Resource and output trends in the United States since 1870’ in American Economic Review, 2, 5–23.

Abramovitz

(1986). ‘Catching up, forging ahead and falling behind’ in Journal ofEconomic History, 46, 385–406.

Abramovitz

(1992). ‘Catch-up and convergence in the postwar growth boom and after’, unpublished paper, workshop on Historical Perspectives on the International Convergence of Productivity, New York.

Ackley

(1978). Macroeconomics, London: Collier-Macmillan.

Arrow

J.K.

(1962). The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing. Review of EconomicStudies, 29, 155–73.

Arthur

(1983). ‘Competing techniques and lock-in by historical events. The dynamics of allocation with increasing returns’ in CEPR, Stanford, CA, Stanford University.

Arthur

(1989). ‘Competing technologies, increasing returns and lock-in by historical events’ in Economic Journal, 99(1), 116–31.

Barro

Sala

Martin

(1996). Economic Growth, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Baumol

W.J.

(1986). ‘Productivity Growth, Convergence and Welfare: What the long-run data show’, American Economic Review, 1072–85.

10.

Buchanan

Tullock

(1962). The Calculus of Consent, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

11.

Buchanan

Vanber

(1991). ‘The market as a creative process’ in Economics and Philosophy, 167–186.

12.

David

(1975). Technical Choice, Innovations and Economic Growth, Cambridge: C.U.P.

13.

David

(1985). ‘Clio and the economics of Qwerty’ in American Economic Review, 75(2), 332–337.

14.

Denison

(1962). ‘The sources of economic growth in the United States and the alternatives before us’, Washington, D.C.: Committee for Economic Development.

15.

Denzau

North

(1994) ‘Shared mental models: ideologies and institutions’ in Kyklos, 47, 3–31.

16.

Eldredge

Gould

(1972). Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to Philetic Gradualism’ in Schopf

(ed.) Models in Paleobiology, San Francisco: Cooper.

17.

Freeman

(1994). ‘The economics of technical change’ in Cambridge Journal of Economics, 18, 463–514.

18.

Griliches

(1996). ‘The discovery of the residual: a historical note’ in Journal of EconomicLiterature, xxxiv, 1324–1330.

19.

Hayek

F.A.

(1978). New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economies and the History of Ideas, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

20.

Hobbes

(1651). Leviathan, London: Penguin Books.

21.

Kauffman

S.A.

(1995). At Home in the Universe: The Search of Laws of Self-Organization andComplexity, Oxford: O.U.P.

22.

Kirzner

I.M.

(1992). The Meaning of Market Process: Essays in the Development of AustrianEconomics, London: Routledge.

23.

Krugman

(1994). Vendiendo prosperidad, Barcelona: Ariel.

24.

Kuznets

(1973). ‘Modern economic growth: findings and reflections’ in AmericanEconomic Review, 63(3), 247–58.

25.

Lucas

(1988). ‘On the mechanics of economic development” in Journal of MonetaryEconomics, 2, 3–42.

26.

Lumsden

Ch.J.

Wilson

E.D.

(1983). Promethean Fire, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

27.

Maddison

(1996) La economic mundial 1820–1992. Paris: OCDE.

28.

Mohammadian

Mansour

(2000). Bioeconomics: Biological Economics. Interdisciplinary Study ofBiology, Economics and Education. Madrid: Edición Personal.

29.

Monod

(1971). Azar y necesidad, Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

30.

Nelson

Winter

(1982). An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

31.

North

(1981). Structure and Change in Economic History, New York: Norton.

32.

North

(1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: C.U.P.

33.

North

(1994). ‘Economic performance through time’ in American Economic Review, June, 84(3), 359–68.

34.

North

Wallis

(1982). ‘Longer-run determinants of the economic role of the U.S. government’ in AEA papers and Proceedings, 72(2).

35.

North

Weingast

(1989). ‘Constitutions and commitments: The evolutions of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England’ in Journal ofEconomic History, 803–32.

36.

Prigogine

(1984). ‘New Perspectives in Complexity’ in The Science and Praxis ofComplexity: Contributions to the Symposium held at Montpellier, The United Nations University, 107–118.

37.

Przeworski

Limongi

(1993). ‘Political regimens and economic growth’ in Journalof Economic Perspectives, 7(3), 51–69.

38.

Romer

(1994). ‘The origins of endogenous growth’ in Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(1), 3–22.

39.

Rosenberg

(1992). Economic-Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns?, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

40.

Salter

E.G. (1986). Productividad y cambio tecnico, Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social.

41.

Schumpeter

J.A.

(1939). Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of theCapitalist Process, New York: McGraw-Hill.

42.

Scully

(1992). Constitutional Environments and Economic Growth, Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.

43.

Simon

H.A.

(1978). ‘Rationality as a process and as a product of thought’ in AmericanEconomic Review, 68, 1–16.

44.

Solow

(1956). ‘A contribution to the theory of growth’ in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 65–94.

45.

Sugden

(1989). ‘Spontaneous order’ in Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3(4), 85–97.

46.

Wilson

E.O.

(1979). Sobre la naturaleza humana, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica.

47.

Wilson

E.O.

(1998). Consilience, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

48.

Wittman

(1989). ‘Why democracies produce efficient results’ in Journal of PoliticalEconomy, 97, 1395–1424.