ABSTRACT
W itt’s paper actually deals with two separate issues: the first half explores the possibilities of a cross-fertilization between Austrian Economics (AE) and Evolutionary Economics (EE), as far as it concerns the crucial issue of EE according to Witt: to explain the emergence of ‘novelty’ (specific new items), which causes endogenous change in economies. This part of the paper searches for a theoretical basis for this major element of EE in the subjectivist core of AE. The second half of the paper concerns a wholly different subject: the social processes of the selective transmission and continuation of novelty, i.e. the matter of its dissemination, as propounded in Hayek’s social philosophy (as in his Law, Legislation and Liberty; 19731979). This is a different subject, and one not really amenable to subjectivist-individualist treatment. This part of the paper is essentially a critique of Hayek’s apparent ‘objectivist-collectivist’ stance in explaining the success of particular social rules or institutions, from the viewpoint of the Austrian (and originally Hayek’s own!) subjectivist-individualist paradigm.
