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To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2009.01572.x Byline: Arthur J. Robson (1) Abstract: Abstract. Adoption of agriculture at the expense of hunting and gathering was the dramatic precondition for all modern civilization. Recent data suggest that, because of this transition, humans initially were more disease prone, smaller, less nourished, and shorter-lived. To explain why individuals chose agriculture over hunting and gathering, this paper develops a simple model of the evolution of preferences over the quality and quantity of children, as would have been generated by our long history as a species. These preferences would have induced the choice of agriculture, but also would have led to these otherwise puzzling health effects. Abstract (Spanish): La transition neolithique vers l'agriculture : une perspective bioeconomique. L'adoption de l'agriculture en remplacement de la chasse et de la cueillette a ete une condition prealable dramatique pour toutes les civilisations modernes. Des donnees recentes suggerent cependant que, en consequence de cette transition, les humains sont devenus, dans les premiers temps apres la transition, davantage vulnerables a la maladie, ont vu leur esperance de vie diminuer, ont ete moins bien nourris, et sont devenus plus petits. Pourquoi alors est-ce que des individus qui avaient le choix entre deux systemes economiques ont choisi l'agriculture? Pour expliquer ce choix, ce memoire developpe un modele simple de l'evolution des preferences quant a la qualite et la quantite des enfants. Celles-ci auraient ete engendrees par notre longue histoire en tant qu'espece. Ces preferences auraient engendre le choix de l'agriculture, mais auraient aussi entraine d'autre part ces effets deconcertants sur la sante. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University

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.

The basic biological approach used by Alan R. Rogers to examine the rate of time preference is examined. The reproductive value and the presence of interior solutions for 'same-age transfers' are questioned.

The evolutionary impacts of life histories on intertemporal preferences are investigated. Results show that evolution generates a present bias by maximizing the population growth rate. A mathematical model for understanding preferences is also presented.

An optimal aging theory, in which there is an endogenous rise in mortality rates with age, is presented. The model expects maximum fertility to occur at an age when somatic growth ends. How biology can be integrated with economics is also explained.

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.

An analogy is drawn between the biological evolution of human characteristics from hunter-gatherer society to more sophisticated society and the evolution in an economy. Learning-by-doing is equated to indirect means of investment in the business.

This paper presents an unconventional argument based on population growth to bolster marginal productivity theory. There is an economy with a single output produced from a number of different types of labor. Each type of labor is reproduced from that type itself and from the amount of the output devoted to it under some income distributional norm. Any norm which fails to induce convergence to maximal balanced growth is growth dominated, in that the population and income it induces can be overwhelmed eventually. On the maximal balanced growth path, the norm divides output according to marginal productivity.

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.

This paper is a selective survey of recent work on evolutionary models of games. It is shown how evolution, in a literal biological sense, may have generated the attitudes to risk that are the basis of strategic behaviour. Such attitudes to risk may or may not conform to the expected utility theorem. Although strategic behaviour itself is bound to be importantly influenced by non-genetic mechanisms, these mechanisms may remain analogous to biological inheritance, at least in special cases. The theory of evolutionary games derived in this way is sketched, and applications to various coordination games are discussed.

Some of the most obvious complex adaptive systems are biological. A key concern in biology is how the overall properties of systems relate to the behaviour of their components. Competition between these components in the form of an arms race, the 'Red Queen effect', helps explain the trend towards more complex organisms. This effect helps explain why these biological systems became and remained complex. It may well also have driven the most distinctive and economically relevant of human biological characteristics - high intelligence. Analogously, competition in the form of the Red Queen effect is a promising avenue of research within economics.

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.