nep-evo New Economics Papers
on Evolutionary Economics
Issue of 2021‒04‒05
four papers chosen by
Matthew Baker
City University of New York

  1. Tolerant moral judgment drives evolution of collective action By Radzvilavicius, Arunas
  2. SIR Economic Epidemiological Models with Disease Induced Mortality By Aditya Goenka; Lin Liu; Manh-Hung Nguyen
  3. In-group versus Out-group Preferences in Intergroup Conflict: An Experiment By Chowdhury, Subhasish; Mukherjee, Anwesha; Sheremeta, Roman
  4. A Unified Model of Cohort Mortality for Economic Analysis By Flavien Moreau; Adriana Lleras-Muney

  1. By: Radzvilavicius, Arunas (University of Sydney)
    Abstract: In public goods games, the benefit of collective action is shared among all participants, and this creates strong incentives to defect. Theoretical studies and economic experiments predict that without enforcement mechanisms, cooperation in public goods games should collapse. But human societies have repeatedly resolved collective action dilemmas through social norms and institutions. Humans condition their social behavior on the moral reputations of other individuals, and the reputations themselves reflect their past behavior. Here I show how Indirect Reciprocity mechanisms based on group reputations and group-level norms can evolve to promote collective action in public goods games. Individual reputations reflect moral judgments of social behavior within groups, according to the prevailing social norm. Only three norms previously studied as part of Indirect Reciprocity in pairwise games can sustain public goods investments, and their performance depends on how tolerant individuals are to occasional antisocial behavior within groups. When members of the society have predominantly tolerant moral views towards groups, only the norm that abstains from judgment in morally ambiguous interactions (known as ``Staying'') can sustain collective action.
    Date: 2021–01–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:neq9g&r=all
  2. By: Aditya Goenka (Unknown); Lin Liu (Unknown); Manh-Hung Nguyen (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)
    Abstract: This paper studies an optimal growth model where there is an infectious disease with SIR dynamics which can lead to mortality. Health expenditures (alternatively intensity of lockdowns) can be made to reduce infectivity of the disease. We study implications of two different ways to model the disease related mortality - early and late in infection mortality - on the equilibrium health and economic outcomes. In the former, increasing mortality reduces infections by decreasing the fraction of infectives in the population, while in the latter the fraction of infectives increases. We characterize the steady states and the outcomes depend in the way mortality is modeled. With early mortality, increasing mortality leads to higher equilibrium per capita output and consumption while in the late mortality model these decrease. We establish sufficiency conditions and provide the first results in economic models with SIR dynamics with and without disease related mortality - a class of models which are non-convex and have endogenous discounting so that no existing results are applicable.
    Keywords: Prevention,Lockdown,Economic growth,Sufficiency conditions,Mortality,SIR model,Covid-19,Infectious diseases,Health expenditure
    Date: 2021–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03170689&r=all
  3. By: Chowdhury, Subhasish; Mukherjee, Anwesha; Sheremeta, Roman
    Abstract: Individuals participating in a group conflict have different preferences, e.g., maximizing their own payoff, maximizing the group’s payoff, or defeating the rivals. When such preferences are present simultaneously, it is difficult to distinctly identify the impact of those preferences on conflict. In order to separate in-group and out-group preferences, we conduct an experiment in which human in-group or out-group players are removed while keeping the game strategically similar. Our design allows us to study (i) how effort in a group conflict vary due to in-group and out-group preferences, and (ii) how the impact of these preferences vary when the two groups have explicitly different social identities. The results of our experiment show that the presence of in-groups enhances concern about individual payoffs. A further presence of out-groups moderates the concern for individual payoffs through an additional concern for own group payoffs. The negative effect of the in-group preferences and the positive effect of the out-group preferences are weaker when group members have a common social identity.
    Keywords: Group conflict; Contest; Identity; Social preferences.
    JEL: C91 C92 D72 D74
    Date: 2021–01–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:105690&r=all
  4. By: Flavien Moreau; Adriana Lleras-Muney
    Abstract: We propose a dynamic production function of population health and mortality from birth onwards. Our parsimonious model provides an excellent fit for the mortality and survival curves for both primate and human populations since 1816. The model sheds light on the dynamics behind many phenomena documented in the literature, including (i) the existence and evolution of mortality gradients across socio-economic statuses, (ii) non-monotonic dynamic effects of in-utero shocks, (iii) persistent or “scarring” effects of wars and (iv) mortality displacement after large temporary shocks such as extreme weather.
    Keywords: Health;Aging;Population and demographics;Women;Environment;Mortality,In-utero shocks,Selection,Scarring,WP,health stock,health distribution,investment schedule,log mortality rates,health shock
    Date: 2021–02–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/037&r=all

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