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Economic Darwinism

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  • Birgitte Sloth
  • Hans Whitta-Jacobsen

Abstract

We define an evolutionary process of “economic Darwinism” for playing-the-field, symmetric games. The process captures two forces. One is “economic selection”: if current behavior leads to payoff differences, behavior yielding lowest payoff has strictly positive probability of being replaced by an arbitrary behavior. The other is “mutation”: any behavior has at any point in time a strictly positive, very small probability of shifting to an arbitrary behavior. We show that behavior observed frequently is in accordance with “evolutionary equilibrium”, a static equilibrium concept suggested in the literature. Using this result, we demonstrate that generally under positive (negative) externalities, economic Darwinism implies even more under- (over-) activity than does Nash equilibrium.
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  • Birgitte Sloth & Hans Whitta-Jacobsen, 2011. "Economic Darwinism," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 70(3), pages 385-398, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:theord:v:70:y:2011:i:3:p:385-398
    DOI: 10.1007/s11238-009-9165-z
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    1. Hehenkamp, Burkhard & Wambach, Achim, 2010. "Survival at the center--The stability of minimum differentiation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 853-858, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Evolutionary game theory; Darwinian evolution; Economic selection; Mutation; Evolutionary equilibrium; Stochastic stability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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