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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Matthias Hanauske; Jennifer Kunz; Steffen Bernius; Wolfgang K\"onig |
| Abstract: | The last financial and economic crisis demonstrated the dysfunctional long-term effects of aggressive behaviour in financial markets. Yet, evolutionary game theory predicts that under the condition of strategic dependence a certain degree of aggressive behaviour remains within a given population of agents. However, as the consequences of the financial crisis exhibit, it would be desirable to change the 'rules of the game' in a way that prevents the occurrence of any aggressive behaviour and thereby also the danger of market crashes. The paper picks up this aspect. Through the extension of the in literature well-known Hawk-Dove game by a quantum approach, we can show that dependent on entanglement, also evolutionary stable strategies can emerge, which are not predicted by classical evolutionary game theory and where the total economic population uses a non aggressive quantum strategy. |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:0904.2113&r=evo |
| By: | Basu, Kaushik (Cornell University) |
| Abstract: | Much of economics is built on the assumption that individuals are driven by self-interest and economic development is an outcome of the free play of such individuals. On the few occasions that the existence of altruism is recognized in economics, the tendency is to build this from the axiom of individual selfishness. The aim of this paper is to break from this tradition and to treat as a primitive that individuals are endowed with the 'cooperative spirit', which allows them to work in their collective interest, even when that may not be in their self-interest. The paper tracks the interface between altruism and group identity. By using the basic structure of a Prisoner's Dilemma game among randomly picked individuals and building into it assumptions of general or in-group altruism, the paper demonstrates how our selfish rationality interacts with our innate sense of cooperation. The model is used to outline circumstances under which cooperation will occur and circumstances where it will break down. The paper also studies how sub-groups of a society can form cooperative blocks, whether to simply do better for themselves or exploit others. |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:corcae:09-06&r=evo |
| By: | Robert Hassink; Claudia Klaerding |
| Abstract: | Economic geographers have recently been confronted with attempts to constitute both relational and evolutionary economic geography. The two proposed paradigms have much in common, such as the perception of space as being socially constructed instead of a pre-given entity with causal powers. Until now, however, astonishingly little has been written about the differences between these proposed paradigms. By comparatively focussing on three research issues, the paper concludes that the conceptual differences are rather subtle and that the relational approach seems to include a wider and therefore, more unspecific perspective to explain the distribution of economic activities over space. |
| Keywords: | trade network, knowledge network, social network analysis, wine sector |
| JEL: | B52 O18 R11 R12 |
| Date: | 2009–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:0911&r=evo |
| By: | Jeffrey Butler; Paola Giuliano; Luigi Guiso |
| Abstract: | A vast literature has investigated the relationship between trust and aggregate economic performance. We investigate the relationship between individual trust and individual economic performance. We .nd that individual income is hump-shaped in a measure of intensity of trust beliefs available in the European Social Survey. We show that heterogeneity of trust beliefs in the population, coupled with the tendency of individuals to extrapolate beliefs about others from their own level of trustworthiness, could generate the non-monotonic relationship between trust and income. Highly trustworthy individuals think others are like them and tend to form beliefs that are too optimistic, causing them to assume too much social risk, to be cheated more often and ultimately perform less well than those who happen to have a trustworthiness level close to the mean of the population. On the other hand, the low-trustworthiness types form beliefs that are too conservative and thereby avoid being cheated, but give up prfitable opportunities too often and, consequently, underperform. Our estimates imply that the cost of either excessive or too little trust is comparable to the income lost by foregoing college. Furthermore, we find that people who trust more are cheated more often by banks as well as when purchasing goods second hand, when relying on the services of a plumber or a mechanic and when buying food. We complement the survey evidence with experimental evidence showing that own trustworthiness and expectations of others' trustworthiness in a trust game are strongly correlated and that performance in the game is hump-shaped. |
| Keywords: | Trust, trustworthiness, economic performance, culture, false consensus |
| JEL: | A1 A12 D1 O15 Z1 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2009/33&r=evo |
| By: | Joseph Daniels (Center for Global and Economic Studies, Marquette University); Marc von der Ruhr (Department of Economics, Saint Norbert College) |
| Abstract: | Though the recent literature offers intuitively appealing bases for, and evidence of a linkage between religious beliefs, religious participation and economic outcomes, evidence on a relationship between religion and trust is mixed. By allowing for an attendance effect, disaggregating Protestant denominations, and using a more extensive data set, probit models of the General Social Survey (GSS), 1975 through 2000, show that Black Protestants, Pentecostals, fundamentalist Protestants, and Catholics, trust others less than individuals who do not claim a preference for a particular denomination. For conservation denominations the effect of religion is though affiliation not attendance. In contrast, liberal Protestants trust others more and this effect is reinforced by attendance. The impact of religion on moderate Protestants is only through attendance, as frequency of attendance increases trust of others while the denomination effect is insignificant. |
| Keywords: | religion, social trust |
| JEL: | Z12 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrq:wpaper:0902&r=evo |