Territorial Bargaining

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.