Search

A study on the evolutionary foundations of intertemporal preferences is discussed. Evolution chooses for agents who maximize the discounted sum of expected utility when all the risk affecting survival and reproduction is distinctive. The aggregate uncertainty concerning survival rates leads to discount rates that exceed the sum of population growth rate and death rate.

We argue for attention to the evolutionary origins of economic behaviour. Going beyond this, we argue that the economy of hunting and gathering was the context in which evolution shaped human characteristics that underlie modern economic behaviour. We first reconsider the basic biological question of why aging occurs at all. We then illustrate the usefulness of considering foraging economics by asking why it is biologically advantageous for humans to live long after their reproductive career is over. Further, we argue that foraging economics would have led to the simultaneous exaggeration of intelligence and of longevity that is characteristic of humans.

An equilibrium exists between strategies which are noisy and have bounded recall and considering this equilibrium the sufficiently greater recall enjoys an advantage that is increasing in the original level of recall and so capturing the Red Queen effect. Strategic rationality is under natural selection and the selection pressure to reduce a small amount of noise is less than that to increase recall.

The Pareto-superior equilibrium has been chosen in the key class of 2x2 coordination games. Using the KMR approach, the Pareto-superior equilibrium was adopted even if not risk-dominant. Convergence to the invariant distribution has been shown to be relatively fast. Sensitivity of the major properties of the KMR model has been investigated to the exact specification of the mechanism that matches individuals in each stage of play.

A biological model used in maximizing expected offspring is used in evaluating the gambling attitudes toward commodities. The model indicates that the biological and economic requisites are similar in a fixed environment while the biological model is less susceptible to individual attitude towards risks. This deviation implies the importance of risk evaluation in determining the maximum utilities in gambling over commodities.

See Harris ([12] chapter 13) for data on indirect infanticide in modern societies and Hausfater and Hrdy ([16]) on infanticide in animals and humans. Keywords: human self domestication; infanticide; pleistocene; reactive aggression; violence EN human self domestication infanticide pleistocene reactive aggression violence N.PAG N.PAG 5 05/08/21 20210505 NES 210505 Introduction The notion of domestication has played a role in attempts to understand human evolution going right back to Darwin ([8]) (see Hare, [10]). Hare ([10]) lays out his account in "Survival of the Friendliest" and Wrangham has done much of the recent work on HSD; see Wrangham ([31]) and references there. Evidence On Infanticide And Child Homicide In The Pleistocene Empirical evidence of infanticide has been documented in both human societies and in non-humans. [Extracted from the article]

Criticisms on the work of Gul and Pearce regarding the small effect of forward induction as an equilibrium refinement failed to consider the effect of forward induction on subgame perfect equilibrium. This subgame perfect equilibrium exists especially when a continuous payoff irrelevant public signal exists.