To explain emergent cultural phenomena, this paper argues, it is inevitable to understand the evolution of complex human cognitive adaptations and their links to the population-level dynamics of cultural variation. On the one hand, the process of cultural transmission is influenced and...

This paper presents a simple mathematical model that shows how economic inequality between social groups can arise and be maintained even when the only adaptive learning processes driving cultural evolution increases individual's economic gains. The key assumption is that human populations are...

This paper incorporates aspects of humans' evolved cognition into a formal model of cultural evolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how the biased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influences agents'...

This paper presents a new framework for analyzing inequality that moves beyond the anonymity postulate. We estimate the determinants of sectoral choice and the joint distributions of outcomes across sectors. We determine which components of realized earnings variability are due to uncertainty...

Societies socialize children about many things, including sex. Socialization is costly. It uses scarce resources, such as time and effort. Parents weigh the marginal gains from socialization against its costs. Those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale indoctrinate their daughters less...

The UK's energy transition (to a sustainable, low-carbon development path) may turn out to be highly dependant on the engendering and embedding of new types of social practice as well as on the widespread uptake of new low-carbon technologies. We argue that social change and social movements may...

Conventional R&D-based growth theory suggests that productivity growth is positively correlated with population size or population growth, an implication which is hard to see in the data. Here we integrate microfounded fertility and schooling into an otherwise standard R&D-based growth model. We...

Recent developments in society have generated misalignment between the welfare state and socio-economic conditions and preferences. This paper emphasis developments in the labor market and the structure, stability and preferences of the family, as well as macroeconomic changes. The latter...

Conventional R&D-based growth theory suggests that productivity growth is positively correlated with population size or population growth, an implication which is hard to see in the data. Here we integrate micro-founded fertility and schooling into an otherwise standard R&D-based growth model....