The Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) is an international organization of economists working in the institutionalist and

evolutionary Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certa ...

traditions of

Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (; July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American Economics, economist and Sociology, sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known Criticism of capitalism, critic of capitalism. In his best-known book ...

John R. Commons John Rogers Commons (October 13, 1862 – May 11, 1945) was an American institutional economist, Georgist, progressive and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Early years John R. Commons was born in Hollansburg, Ohio o ...

and Wesley Mitchell. It is part of the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA), a group of approximately 63 organizations including the American Economics Association (AEA), that holds a three-day meeting each January.

History

AFEE originated in 1959 as an informal group that met in a rump session of the ASSA meetings. They called themselves the Wardman Group after the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington D.C. where the initial 1959 meeting took place. The founding members were economists who found it increasingly difficult to get their papers included on sessions sponsored by the American Economics Association. Although the

AEA The AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association) was a nationwide non-profit trade association that represented all segments of the technology industry. It lobbied governments at the state, federal, and international levels; provided acces ...

was founded by the institutionalist economist Richard T. Ely, by the 1950s it had drifted away from the institutionalist approach and towards abstract mathematical modelling. The members of AFEE are sometimes called "old institutionalists" to distinguish them from the followers of

New Institutional Economics New Institutional Economics (NIE) is an economic perspective that attempts to extend economics by focusing on the institutions (that is to say the social and legal norms and rules) that underlie economic activity and with analysis beyond earlier ...

. The Wardman Group renamed itself the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) in 1965. Clarence E. Ayres was elected the first president and he presided over presentations at the ASSA meetings in San Francisco in December 1966. In 1967, AFEE began publishing a quarterly academic journal, the

Journal of Economic Issues The ''Journal of Economic Issues'' is an academic journal of economics. The current editor-in-chief is William Waller (Hobart and William Smith Colleges). It is published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Association for Evolutionary Economics ...

. In the 1970s, the "old institutionalists" competed with the

Marxists Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and ...

and the Post Keynesians for prominence within

heterodox economics Heterodox economics is a broad, relative term referring to schools of economic thought which are not commonly perceived as belonging to mainstream economics. There is no absolute definition of what constitutes heterodox economic thought, as it i ...

but by the 1980s they began to be noticed once again. In 1979, some members of AFEE who thought it had deviated too far from its roots, formed a sister organization, the Association for Institutionalist Thought (AFIT). The stature of old, or original, institutional economics was further strengthened by the formation in 1988 of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.

Aims and scope

AFEE views itself as running parallel to the AEA in covering all areas of economics. It places less stress on mathematical model building and more on a realistic analysis of economic policy issues. It is open to interdisciplinary approaches that incorporate insights from history, psychology, management science and political science. Moreover, it stresses the importance of broadening the scope of economics to consider questions of economic ends, as well as economic means. Since its founding, AFEE has confronted issues of

environmental degradation Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

, inequality, corporate power, the negative effect of advertising and the limitations of economic growth as a measure of economic success.

Awards and scholarships

The Veblen-Commons Award is given annually in recognition of the contributions made by an outstanding scholar in the field of evolutionary institutional economics. Past recipients include

Gunnar Myrdal Karl Gunnar Myrdal ( ; ; 6 December 1898 – 17 May 1987) was a Swedish economist and sociologist. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money an ...

John Kenneth Galbraith John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the ...

Gardiner Means Gardiner Coit Means (June 8, 1896 – February 15, 1988) was an American economist who worked at Harvard University, where he met lawyer-diplomat Adolf A. Berle. Together they wrote the seminal work of corporate governance, ''The Modern Corporat ...

, and

Hyman Minsky Hyman Philip Minsky (September 23, 1919 – October 24, 1996) was an American economist and economy professor at Washington University in St. Louis. A distinguished scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, his research was inten ...

. The James H. Street Latin American Scholarship is awarded to a person residing in Latin America and working within the tradition of original institutional economics. The James H. Street scholar is awarded round trip transportation and accommodation at the ASSA meetings and given the opportunity to present his or her work. The Clarence E. Ayres Award is awarded to a promising international scholar working within the tradition of original institutional economics. The Ayres scholar is awarded round trip transportation and accommodation at the ASSA meetings and given the opportunity to present his or her work.

References

External links

Association for Evolutionary Economics
{{Authority control Economics societies