MFiM ~ Abstract

This chapter calls for an approach to economic policy that takes evolutionary and complex systems theories into account. Such an approach alters the way that economic policy is framed and how policy co-depends on understanding markets as outcomes of nonmarket interactions, incomplete information, path dependency, and coordination failures. Using several illustrative examples, the chapter explores the application of evolutionary and complexity thinking to policy criteria, goals, instruments, and policy assessment. These examples—the transition to a low carbon economy, using multilevel selection to inform group design in various human organizations, policy making as shaping and creating markets, government failures in Greek farm policy, and protecting the Sudd Wetland in South Sudan—are used to identify key issues for an evolutionary and complexity approach to public policy.