Studying evolutionarily successful behavior we show in a general framework that when individuals maximizing payoff differentials invest resources in punishing others. Interestingly, these investments are increasing in individuals, own wealth and decreasing in the wealth of others.

In this study we propose a formal framework for the indirect evolutionary approach as initiated by Güth and Yaari (1992). It allows to endogenize preferences and to study their evolution. We define two-player indirect evolutionary games with observable types and show how to incorporate...