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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Jerg Gutmann; Anna Lewczuk-Czerwi\'nska; Jacek Lewkowicz; Stefan Voigt |
| Abstract: | Constitutions as the formal foundation of a country's legal and political system have important economic and political effects. Yet, we still know little about why constitutions set effective constraints on politicians in some societies, while being largely disregarded in others. Here, we ask if national culture matters for constitutional compliance. We study a cross-section of 115 countries, making use of novel indicators of constitutional compliance. We find that societies with a more individualistic population exhibit higher levels of compliance. These results are robust and extend to instrumental variables estimations. They imply a novel transmission channel from cultural traits to long-term economic development: individualistic national culture increases the credibility of constitutional self-commitments. Our analysis also supports the more general idea that the effects of formal institutions depend on the informal institutional environment in which they are embedded. Regarding religion, our results are consistent with past research that attributes the lack of development in the modern Muslim world to deficient institutional quality. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.23369 |
| By: | Matthew O. Jackson; Benjamin S. Manning; Yutong Xie; Walter Yuan; Qiaozhu Mei |
| Abstract: | We introduce a general, easy-to-implement AI-based method for studying the structure and complexity of human behavior. We assign a large language model a ``type vector'' and then prompt it to choose actions across settings in which we observe human choices. For instance, the type vector (2, 4) becomes ``You are a player characterized by the following profile: 2 out of 5 in Altruism, 4 out of 5 in Risk Aversion, '' after which it is prompted to make choices. We vary the dimensions (e.g., Altruism, Fairness, Trust, $\dots$) and values (e.g., 1--5) to minimize distance to human choices. Applying the method to 119, 147 decisions made by 78, 657 subjects from more than 35 countries across 10 classic economic game roles, we find that human behavior can be closely matched using three dimensions: Risk Aversion, Strategic Sophistication, and Trust. Moreover, the types needed to fit individuals across games cluster into fewer than a dozen groups, and can predict behavior in held-out games with different rules and available actions. The results suggest that behavior across diverse settings can be approximated by a low-dimensional, portable representation, supporting the possibility of general yet parsimonious theories across the behavioral sciences. More broadly, the method can provide insights into the structure of many human behaviors. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.18265 |
| By: | Desierto, Desiree; Koyama, Mark |
| Abstract: | How does institutional change take place? This question poses a number of challenges for scholars working in the New Institutional tradition. We discuss both functionalist approaches to institutional change and our preferred framework based on cooperation and conflict. We illustrate the latter approach through some applications taken from recent scholarship in economic history. |
| Keywords: | Institutions; Institutional change; Conflict; Cooperation; Efficiency |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19285 |
| By: | Foivos Savva; Michele Lombardi; Ritesh Jain |
| Abstract: | Can altruism serve as the behavioral foundation for efficient institutional design? We study full implementation in Berge equilibrium, the solution concept that formalizes strategic altruism: each agent's opponents collectively maximize her payoff. While Berge equilibrium resolves the Prisoner's Dilemma and can eliminate cooperation failures in social dilemmas, we show that this optimism does not survive the move from individual behavior to institutional design. First, we show that the weak Pareto optimal rule is not implementable in Berge equilibrium. Second, on the unrestricted domain of strict preferences, any social choice rule that is both weakly Pareto efficient and implementable in Berge equilibrium must be dictatorial. Finally, we show that Berge implementability is strictly more demanding than Nash implementability: every social goal achievable under strategic altruism is also achievable under self-interest, but not vice versa. The very feature that makes Berge equilibrium appealing at the behavioral level, that is, opponents protecting each agent's payoff, is precisely what forecloses efficient, non-dictatorial institutions at the design level. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.24774 |