Recently, evolutionary economic geography has gained popularity in the field of economic geography in the West. Evolutionary economic geography deals with changes in the economic landscape through time via the concept of ‘routine,’ which is equivalent to a ‘genome’ in corporations.
Evolutionary economic geography has been inspired by the process of regional growth and innovation in the context of evolutionary economics. The evolutionary component of economic geography is based on concepts such as contingency, lock-in by increasing returns, and network externality from path-dependency theory; variation, selection, and retention stemming from Generalized Darwinism; and emergence, panarchy, resilience, and the adaptive cycle model from complexity theory.
The evolutionary theory of modern biology was not adopted without qualification in evolutionary economic geography. Instead, Generalized Darwinism was adopted as its ontology. For instance, the Lamarckian approach of acquired characteristics, in which genetic features are acquired as an adaptation of the individual’s post-birth environment and passed down to future generations, has been completely rejected in modern biology since the time of Darwin. However, in evolutionary economics, there is a view that a company constitutes ‘routines’ as part of the process of adaptation to its environment subsequent to its formation; this concept is closely akin to the Lamarckian methodology rejected in biology. The wide gap between biology and this methodology is highly significant. Genes are likened to routines, while companies are likened to populations, leading to the application of concepts such as panarchy and resilience, which in turn grew out of the concepts of ecosystem and succession, respectively.
The development of biological methodology in economic geography grew out of criticism of the equilibrium concept of physical and mechanistic viewpoints in neoclassical economics. Alternatively, the concepts of restricted rationality, multiple equilibrium, irreversibility, increasing return, and self-organization are employed. Accordingly, corporate behaviors such as entry, development, and withdrawal in the market are viewed as selection and variation required for the adaptation of “routines” to market environment conditions. As a result of spinoffs and knowledge spillover, characterized by path dependence or contingency, cluster accumulation and network building take place.
These basic routines play an important part in organizations at the corporate level, and also impact cities and regions. There is a need to consider emergence at the macro-structure level in relation to the impact of low-level processes, and also the relationship of broad-based social structure and embeddedness. In adjusting the structures of complicated processes of production, distribution, and consumption in the global landscape, global production networks, the spatial division of labor, and institutional arguments at the national and regional level facilitate individual company strategies and industrial dynamism. In addition, evolutionary economic geography must avoid fixed concepts of path dependence or lock-in.
To achieve this, we need to prioritize location and region from a broader view of the spatial division of labor. We need to pay serious attention to the role of authority and policies in structuring economic organizations. In addition, understanding of the global socioeconomic structure in the national and socioeconomic context is required. Theories on the diversification of national and global institutions seem likely to be an important theme in evolutionary economic geography in the future.
