We examine an evolutionary model of preferences in a society where resources are finite. Agents who develop better strategies for bargaining and trading will grow to dominate the population. We show that successful agents will have preferences that exhibit the "endowment effect". The social institution of private property emerges spontaneously. Agents decisions will be subject to "framing" effect, and we are able to make some predictions as to the frames that will be salient in given situations. The model makes a clear distinction between individual welfare and revealed preferences. Nonetheless, it may still be possible to recover information about individual welfare from behavioral data.
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Length: 30 pages Date of creation: 01 Jan 1997 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:343
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D0 - Microeconomics - - General
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein, 1994.
"A Course in Game Theory,"
MIT Press Books,
The MIT Press,
edition 1, volume 1, number 0262650401.
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