Scientific Mobility and Economic Assumptions: From the Allocation of Scientists to the Socioeconomics of Network Transformation

Abstract

This paper addresses the different interpretations of scientific mobility that derive from two very different sets of economic assumptions: evolutionary economic assumptions and neoclassical economic assumptions. The neoclassical model builds on an understanding of embodied scientific knowledge as ‘human capital’ which underpins a conceptualization of scientific mobility as a knowledge (re)allocation mechanism and therefore as a ‘drain-gain’ dynamics. In contrast, evolutionary economic assumptions lead to a conception of the value of embodied scientific knowledge as necessarily networked, and to understanding scientific mobility as a reconfiguration process transforming economic and science systems in uncertain ways that need to be specifically investigated.

Keywords:

• human capital
• scientific mobility
• neoclassical economic assumptions
• evolutionary economic assumptions

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Carolina Cañibano http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7683-930X

Notes

1 Hands refers to evolutionary economics that does not take a ‘microreductionist strict-Darwinian approach to evolutionary change as ‘nonreductionist evolutionary economics’ (2001, p. 385).

2 Evolutionary realism is ‘nonreductionist’ and is described by Dopfer and Potts (2004) and Potts (2010) as an approach to the ontology of evolution based on three ontological axioms: (1) bimodality, (2) association and (3) Process. ‘All analytically relevant existences in the economic world are constituted as bimodal associative processes in the form of an idea and its actualizations (bimodality) that have particular connections and structure with respect to other ideas (association) and which exists in time as a process’ (Potts, 2010, p. 281).

3 Scientific non-embodied knowledge is treated by economic growth theory as a public good, defined as non-appropriable, non-excludable and non-rival (Nelson, 1959, Arrow, 1962).

4 The same logic can be applied to the allocation of scientific human capital across regions or organizations.

5 As explained in detail by Potts (2000), there is no room in the general equilibrium economic theoretical framework for the analytical treatment of meaningful interaction between elements of the economic system. In the neo-Walrasian economic framework, all elements of the economic system are connected (Loasby, 2012). Thus, the behavior of the system cannot be explained by certain selected connected structures (Cañibano and Potts, 2016, p. 5).