nep-evo New Economics Papers
on Evolutionary Economics
Issue of 2014‒02‒21
five papers chosen by
Matthew Baker
City University of New York

  1. The Formation and Long-run Stability of Cooperative Groups in a Social Dilemma Situation By Maruta, Toshimasa; Okada, Akira
  2. A classification of bargaining solutions by evolutionary origin By Hwang, Sung-Ha; Newton, Jonathan
  3. Two Additional Remarks on Conformism By Schlicht, Ekkehart
  4. Willingness to Compete: Family Matters. By Almås, Ingvild; Cappelen, Alexander W.; Salvanes, Kjell G.; Sørensen, Erik Ø.; Tungodden, Bertil
  5. International interventions to build social capital : evidence from a field experiment in Sudan By Avdeenko, Alexandra; Gilligan, Michael J.

  1. By: Maruta, Toshimasa; Okada, Akira
    Abstract: Abstract: We consider the formation and long-run stability of cooperative groups in a social dilemma situation where the pursuit of individual interests conflicts with the maximization of social welfare. The adaptive play model of Young (1993) is applied to a game of group formation where voluntary participants negotiate for an institution to enforce them to cooperate. For a class of group formation games with two types, the stochastically stable equilibrium can be characterized in terms of the Nash products of the associated hawk-dove games, which summarize the strategic interaction among the individuals in the game.
    Keywords: Adaptive play, cooperation, evolution, group formation, hawk-dove game, social dilemma, stochastic stability, voluntary participation
    JEL: C70 C72
    Date: 2014–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:econdp:2014-03&r=evo
  2. By: Hwang, Sung-Ha; Newton, Jonathan
    Abstract: For games of contracting under perturbed best response dynamics, varying the perturbations along two dimensions (uniform vs. logit, directed vs. undirected) gives four possibilities. Three of these select differing major bargaining solutions as stochastically stable. The fourth possibility yields a new bargaining solution which exhibits significant nonmonotonicities and demonstrates the interplay of two key drivers of evolutionary selection: (i) the ease of making errors; (ii) the ease of responding to errors.
    Keywords: bargaining; adaptive learning; Evolution
    Date: 2014–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:syd:wpaper:2123/9993&r=evo
  3. By: Schlicht, Ekkehart
    Abstract: Abstract This note offers two comments on the article “Social Influences towards Conformism in Economic Experiments” by Hargreaves Heap that is to appear in the Economics e-Journal. One relates to the concept of conformism, the other lines out some phenomena where an explicit recognition of group processes, such as conformism, may be analytically helpful.
    Keywords: Conformism; relative income hypothesis; reference group behavior; social multiplier; social preferences; self-classification; group polarization
    JEL: C91 C92 D43 H41 J41 D1
    Date: 2014–02–13
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lmu:muenec:18376&r=evo
  4. By: Almås, Ingvild (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Cappelen, Alexander W. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Salvanes, Kjell G. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Sørensen, Erik Ø. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Tungodden, Bertil (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)
    Abstract: This paper studies the role of family background in explaining differences in the willingness to compete. By combining data from a lab experiment conducted with a representative sample of adolescents in Norway and high quality register data on family background, we show that family background is fundamental in two important ways. First, boys from low socioeconomic status families are less willing to compete than boys from better off families, even when controlling for confidence, performance, risk preferences, time preferences, social preferences, and psychological traits. Second, family background is crucial for understanding the large gender difference in the willingness to compete. Girls are much less willing to compete than boys among children from better off families, whereas we do not find any gender difference in willingness to compete among children from low socioeconomic status families. Our data suggest that the main mechanism explaining the role of family background is that the father’s socioeconomic status has a large effect on the boys’ willingness to compete, but no effect on the girls. We do not find any effect on the willingness to compete for boys or girls of the mother’s socioeconomic status or other family characteristic that may potentially shape competition preferences, including parental equality and sibling rivalry.
    Keywords: Family background; socioeconomic status; lab experiment.
    JEL: C91 C92 D63
    Date: 2014–02–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2014_003&r=evo
  5. By: Avdeenko, Alexandra; Gilligan, Michael J.
    Abstract: Over the past decade the international community, especially the World Bank, has conducted programs to increase local public service delivery in developing countries by improving local governing institutions and creating social capital. This paper evaluates one such program in Sudan to answer the question: Can the international community change the grassroots civic culture of developing countries to increase social capital? The paper oers three contributions. First, it uses lab-in-the-eld measures to focus on the eects of the program on pro-social preferences without the confounding in uence of any program- induced changes on local governing institutions. Second, it tests whether the program led to denser social networks in recipient communities. Based on these two measures, the eect of the program was a precisely estimated zero. However, in a retrospective survey, respondents from program communities characterized their behavior as being more pro-social and their communities more socially cohesive. This leads to a third contribution of the paper: it provides evidence for the hypothesis, stated by several scholars in the literature, that retrospective survey measures of social capital oer biased evidence of a positive eect of these programs. Regardless of one's faith in retrospective self-reported survey measures, the results clearly point to zero impact of the program on pro-social preferences and social network density. Therefore, if the increase in self-reported behaviors is accurate, it must be because of social sanctions that enforce compliance with pro-social norms through mechanisms other than the social networks that were measured.
    Keywords: Social Capital,Community Development and Empowerment,Housing&Human Habitats,Social Cohesion,Governance Indicators
    Date: 2014–02–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6772&r=evo

This nep-evo issue is ©2014 by Matthew Baker. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.