We examine how preferences evolve by natural selection in a competitive environment similar to that characterizing much of our evolutionary past. We find that the evolutionarily stable preferences in this context exhibit a concern not only for absolute payoffs but also for relative payoffs, and...

In this article we examine the interaction between firms' product and process innovation decisions and the role patent policy can play in directing technological change toward a socially efficient mix of innovations. Product innovation is a variant on a pioneer's new product; process innovation...

Religion, ethnicity, and political ideology all lend themselves to the perpetration of mass atrocities by creating a sense of identity that sets up an Us/Them dichotomy. Atrocities here are seen as arising from the motive of acquiring territory but augmented by other-regarding preferences that...

Books reviewed: Joseph E. Stiglitz and Shahid Yusuf (eds) Rethinking the East Asian Miracle Hal Hill and Jo-o M. Saldanha, East Timor: Development Challenges for the World's Newest Nation Nat J. Colletta, Teck Ghee Lim and Anita Kelles-Viitanen (eds), Social Cohesion and Conflict Prevention in...

We attempt to explain the observation that rival firms often share their technologies. We show that the trading of technical information over the long haul can be sustained as an equilibrium in supergames. The strategy of ejection of a cheating firm from a technology-trading coalition, followed...

The happiness literature has established that, in the developed countries, increasing affluence has not increased well-being in recent decades. We seek an explanation for this in terms of conspicuous consumption, a phenomenon originally identified by Veblen. We develop some simple general...

We argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of India because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women. We set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste-based status...