Models in evolutionary economics and environmental policy

It is commonly recognized that environmental innovations provide an important key to sustainability. However, the two dominant approaches within environmental economics – neoclassical and ecological economics – have found it difficult to develop a systematic research program on environmental innovation. From the 1980s evolutionary economics emerged as a framework for analysing analyzing and understanding economic change and industrial dynamics. Evolutionary economic theory provides a dynamic framework, where differential patterns of survival in populations produce aggregate changes in an economy. From the mid-1990s onwards, evolutionary economics emerged as a promising alternative for the economic analysis of environmental innovations. More recently, scholars have started to develop formal evolutionary models in environmental studies. These efforts reflect a further deepening of the evolutionary program in the area of environmental studies, which opens up possibilities for applications in environmental policy-making