In the last two decades of the twentieth century evolutionary economics has become one of the most important and exciting developments in social science. It is associated with a huge theoretical, empirical and policy literature. Yet relatively little is known about the development of the foundations of evolutionary economics over the preceding 100 years. The gap is filled by this collection of essays by Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, John Maurice Clark, Alfred Marshall, John Atkinson Hobson, Joseph Schumpeter, Armen Alchian, Edith Penrose, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Friedrich Hayek among others. An original introduction by the editor places these contributions in their historical context.