The role of imitative mechanisms within the economic evolution

Abstract

In the light of Schumpeter’s pioneering vision of economic evolution the innovations and innovative entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in the economic development. However, imitations and producers-imitators are essential in diffusing and adapting innovations into the economic exchange processes. In this context the aim of the paper is to model and analyse some properties of imitative mechanisms appearing within the economic evolution. Innovative and imitative mechanisms defined in Hurwicz’s conceptual apparatus are analysed in the economy determined by the use of topological tools usually applied in the general equilibrium theory. As a result it is shown that, in the economy under study, imitative mechanisms are the reasons for and the consequences of innovative mechanisms as well as that the innovative and imitative processes can coexist in the framework of the same innovative mechanism. Moreover it is proven that under some assumptions equilibrium in the economic system analysed can be obtained as a consequence of either of an innovative or an imitative mechanism.