Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy

Series

• Economics, Cognition, and Society

This book brings together Professor Arthur’s pioneering article and provide a comprehensive presentation of his exciting vision of an economics that incorporates increasing returns. After a decade of resistance from economists, these ideas are now being widely discussed and adopted, as Kenneth Arrow recounts in his foreword. In fundamental ways they are changing our views of the working economy.

Praise / Awards

• ". . . this beautifully written collection of essays represents one of the fundamental contributions to economic science in the last two decades."
  --Complexity
  
• "Arthur has the analytic skills, academic training, and courage to present convincingly his rich ideas that are almost heretical to the neoclassical economic tradition. This book could make a dramatic impact on the thinking of all regional scientists, an will occupy a prominent and accessible location on their shelves."
  --Journal of Regional Science
  

• 1. Positive Feedbacks in the Economy
• 2. Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Small Events
• 3. Path-Dependent Processes and the Emergence of Macrostructure / W. Brian Arthur, Yuri M. Ermoliev and Yuri M. Kaniovski
• 4. Industry Location Patterns and the Importance of History
• 5. Information Contagion / W. Brian Arthur and David A. Lane
• 6. Urban Systems and Historical Path Dependence
• 7. Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms in Economics
• 8. Path Dependence, Self-Reinforcement, and Human Learning
• 9. Strategic Pricing in Markets with Increasing Returns / W. Brian Arthur and Andrzej Ruszczynski
• 10. Strong Laws for a Class of Path-Dependent Stochastic Processes / W. Brian Arthur, Yuri M. Ermoliev and Yuri M. Kaniovski.