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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Martin Gregor (Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic) |
| Abstract: | A cornerstone of liberal-democratic regimes is the right of free speech, granted even to nonliberals who manifestly oppose it. Communism and political Islamism are two primary examples of ideologies which are tolerated in spite of calls for the limits on the right of expression. Not surprisingly, it is often argued that a tolerant society needs laws preventing non-tolerant beliefs from attacking tolerance. Yet, does intolerance necessarily prosper in a tolerant society, or is deemed to decay? To address the question, I build an evolutionary model of competing (political and/or religious) beliefs. In the model, individuals are assumed to gain from having beliefs. The gain may increase with intolerance of the belief (premium). High intolerance, however, makes strong believers fragile in a society of tolerant people. Having examined evolutionarily stable states in two specifications, I demonstrate that (for any positive premium) heterogeneity cannot prevent intolerant beliefs from spreading out. A sufficiently small increase in intolerance, when premium exceeds losses from fragility, allows intolerance to spread. Intolerance is vulnerable only as long as the premium is non-positive. This finding can also be interpreted as follows: unless fundamentalist confessions are proved to be vital for individual human existence (positive premium), a tolerant society needs no intervention to preserve tolerance. |
| Keywords: | Evolutionary stability; Religion; Political ideology |
| JEL: | A13 C79 Z10 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp072&r=evo |
| By: | David Chavalarias (CREA - Centre de recherche en épistémologie appliquée - [CNRS : UMR7656] - [Polytechnique - X]) |
| Abstract: | Imitation is fundamental in the understanding of social system dynamics. But the diversity of imitation rules employed by modelers proves that the modeling of mimetic processes cannot avoid the traditional problem of endogenization of all the choices, including the one of the mimetic rules. Starting from the remark that human reflexive capacities are the ground for a new class of mimetic rules, I propose a formal framework, metamimetic games, that enable to endogenize the distribution of imitation rules while being human specific. The corresponding concepts of equilibrium - counterfactually stable state - and attractor are introduced. Finally, I give an interpretation of social differentiation in terms of cultural co-evolution among a set of possible motivations, which departs from the traditional view of optimization indexed to criteria that exist prior to the activity of agents. |
| Keywords: | Social cognition, imitation, cultural co-evolution, differentiation, reflexivity, metacognition, stochastic game theory, endogenous distributions, metamimetic games, counterfactual equilibrium. |
| Date: | 2006–04–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:hal-00007743_v3&r=evo |
| By: | Ken Binmore |
| Abstract: | This paper gives a brief overview of an evolutionary theory of fairness. The ideas are fleshed out in Binmore's book 'Natural Justice' (Oxford University Press, New York, 2005.), which is itself a condensed version of his earlier two-volume book 'Game Theory and the Social Contract' (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994 and 1998). Length 29 pages |
| Date: | 2006–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:evopap:2006-14&r=evo |
| By: | Oded Galor; Omer Moav |
| Abstract: | This research advances an evolutionary growth theory that captures the pattern of life expectancy in the process of development, shedding new light on the sources of the remarkable rise in life expectancy since the Agricultural Revolution. The theory suggests that social, economic and environmental changes that were associated with the transition from hunter-gatherer tribes to sedentary agricultural communities and ultimately to urban societies affected the nature of the environmental hazards confronted by the human population, triggering an evolutionary process that had a significant impact on the time path of human longevity. |
| Keywords: | Life Expectancy, Growth, Technological Progress, Evolution, Natural Selection, Malthusian Stagnation |
| JEL: | I12 J13 N3 O10 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:deg:conpap:c011_062&r=evo |