L'economia dei primitivi

This article aims to interpret the debate on the behaviour of the first human communities, in particular their big game and food sharing practices, through a simple model where the big preys are characterised as public goods. Anthropologists and economists alike have discussed the issue from two opposite points of view. The first assumes essentially self-interested preferences and interpret cooperation for hunting big preys as a consequence of choices under the uncertainty veil. The second one considers non self-interested attitudes such as inequality aversion or strong reciprocity. Using the former interpretation, it can be shown that the mutual cooperation is unanimously preferred, under restrictive assumptions on the payoffs. Using the latter, two Nash equilibria can exist. Moreover, if strong reciprocity is assumed, the equilibrium can be evolutionarily stable. This possibility is strenghtened if strong reciprocity is characterised by the transfer to the cooperators of the sanction assigned to the free riders.