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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Mermer, A.G. (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management) |
| Abstract: | Behavioral Economics aims at understanding the decision of economic agents who are not necessarily monetary utility maximizers and accounts for the fact that agents may have other concerns next to economic gain. This thesis contributes to the literature by studying the behavior of economic agents who are not necessarily monetary utility maximizers in situations with strategic interaction. The second chapter solves a game-theoretic model of contests assuming that agents have reference-dependent preferences. The results help to explain behavior observed in recent experiments that is hard to reconcile with the assumption of standard preferences. The optimal price mechanism is derived which differs markedly from the one derived under the assumption of standard preferences. The third and fourth chapters use laboratory experimentation which allows for careful scrutinizing of behavioral assumptions made in economic models. The third chapter experimentally investigates agents’ cooperative behavior in indefinitely-repeated dilemma games with different strategic environments. It is reported that subjects play collusive choices significantly more often when actions exhibit strategic substitutability than when actions exhibit strategic complementarity. In Chapter 4 we experimentally study information acquisition in a social dilemma game. It is reported that in a twice-repeated trust game trustors choose to be informed about the type of the trustee in a setting where, theoretically, having such information is detrimental for cooperation and material payoffs. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiutis:eaadb29a-8041-4e76-a8d1-3adc17186ac7&r=evo |
| By: | Pasche, Markus |
| Abstract: | This brief note rises doubts on the argument that nudging will help people to behave more rational in terms of their own preferences. This justification of soft paternalism overlooks some methodological problems of expected utility theory which are one of the roots of behavioral economics. |
| Keywords: | soft paternalism; nudging; behavioral economics, utility theory, rationality |
| JEL: | B4 D03 D04 |
| Date: | 2014–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:61140&r=evo |
| By: | Coccia M. (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: | The fundamental problem in the field of the economics of innovation is which economic subjects are the sources of radical innovations and high technological performances. The study here confronts this problem by developing a theoretical framework underpinned in the concept of purposeful system having a purpose of global leadership, which endeavours to analyse the sources of General-Purpose Technologies GPTs in a Schumpeterian world of innovation-based competition. Through an inductive study based on some societies that in the history have generated technological and economic change Roman and Britain Empire, and current USA, the analysis shows vital characteristics that can be the sources of changes in the techno-economic paradigm. In particular, purposeful country-systems with high economic military potential, supported by a strategy of high RD expenditures, and the objective of global leadership, winning international conflicts against other great powers a very strong competition for the hegemony, tend to generate several inventions and radical innovations that are spread, in the long run, across wide geo-economic areas. It seems that the initial sources of GPTs e.g. aqueduct, steam engine, jet aircraft, computer, etc. are, de facto, associated with the global posture of great powers to achieve/sustain global leadership in intensive effective and/or potential international competitions, rather than warfare per se. This study refers to this nexus as leadership-driven innovation. International conflict is the context that spurs the GPTs, which are driven by global leadership of critical societies, whereas initial military RD, demand and procurement are important mechanisms underlying the process that induces emerging path-breaking technologies. The vital linkages between observed facts can support a general socio-economic framework of the sources of path-breaking innovations based on a leadership of main economic subjects that support innovative activity mainly in communications and energy systems parallel to transportation technology and the evolution and development of human societies. |
| Keywords: | Economic History: General; Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913; Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913; Economic Development: General; Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives; Technological Change: Other; |
| JEL: | O31 O39 O10 N00 N31 N33 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2014087&r=evo |
| By: | Daron Acemoglu; James A. Robinson |
| Abstract: | Thomas Piketty's (2014) book, Capital in the 21st Century, follows in the tradition of the great classical economists, like Marx and Ricardo, in formulating general laws of capitalism to diagnose and predict the dynamics of inequality. We argue that general economic laws are unhelpful as a guide to understand the past or predict the future, because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions, as well as the endogenous evolution of technology, in shaping the distribution of resources in society. We use regression evidence to show that the main economic force emphasized in Piketty's book, the gap between the interest rate and the growth rate, does not appear to explain historical patterns of inequality (especially, the share of income accruing to the upper tail of the distribution). We then use the histories of inequality of South Africa and Sweden to illustrate that inequality dynamics cannot be understood without embedding economic factors in the context of economic and political institutions, and also that the focus on the share of top incomes can give a misleading characterization of the true nature of inequality. |
| JEL: | O20 P16 P48 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20766&r=evo |