Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/57527
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Papers on Economics and Evolution No. 1017
Publisher: 
Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
An evolutionary perspective on economic behavior has to account for the influences that the human genetic endowment has on the choices the agents make. Likely to have been fixed in times of fierce selection pressure, this endowment is presumably adapted to the living conditions of early humans. If at all, behavioral economics accounts for its influences on economic decision making in a way similar to the approach taken by evolutionary psychology, i.e. by focusing on decision heuristics and their tensions with modern rationality standards. In an evolutionary perspective, that focus needs to be extended so as to also embrace the motivational underpinnings of economic behavior. In the language of economics this means to inquire into the agents' preferences and to explain how they relate to the human genetic endowment and how they change over time. The paper discusses several implications of such an extension.
Subjects: 
behavioral economics
evolutionary economics
Darwinism
decision heuristics
preferences
development
growth
welfare
JEL: 
A12
B25
B52
D01
D03
D63
O10
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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