TELEOLOGY, DARWINISM AND EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS: THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE ROLE OF NATURAL SELECTION IN FIRM’S BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Departing with an analysis of the theoretical concepts that founded the major achievements of modern evolutionary biology, this paper seeks to give elements for a fruitful understanding of the arguments deployed in a specific moment of the history of economic thought, in what became known as maginalist controversy. In this sense, based on the referential of evolutionary biology, this paper focuses on the analysis of the arguments that used an idea of evolutionary process expressed by several authors engaged in the debate of marginalist controversy, showing that a strictly Darwinian point of view can shred light on the theoretical aspects of economical approaches often labeled as “evolutionary”.