Arthur Robson of Simon Fraser University reviews “Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life” by Herbert Gintis. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes human social life as a game with rules, with people as players in this game and politics as the arena in which these rules are affirmed and changed.”

In response to the question in the title, Does Altruism Exist?, David Sloan Wilson argues forcefully that altruism exists and that the biological mechanism of group selection is responsible. He argues that group selection should be taken especially seriously for humans, since cultural evolution is especially important for us. Economists' view of basic human motivations should then include altruism. Wilson promotes a strong form of pervasive altruism, which seems bound to be inconsistent with many economic phenomena. Although a moderate version of the position he advocates is not easily dismissed, it is unclear what such an extended theory would look like. (JEL D64, Z13)

This paper first considers the implications of biological evolution for economic preferences. It analyzes why utility functions evolved, considers evidence that utility is both hedonic and adaptive, and suggests why such adaptation might have evolved. Time preference and attitudes to risk are treated—in particular, whether the former is exponential and the latter are selfish. Arguments for another form of interdependence—a concern with status—are treated. The paper then considers the evolution of rationality. One hypothesis examined is that human intelligence and longevity were forged by hunter-gatherer economies; another is that intelligence was spurred by competitive social interactions.

This paper supposes an individual cares about his/her own wealth not only directly but also via the relative standing that this wealth induces. The implications for risk-taking are investigated in particular. Such a model provides a natural explanation of the "concave-convex-concave" utility described by M. Friedman and L. Savage (1948). However, there are a number of key differences between the present model and any model based on own wealth alone. For example, an equilibrium wealth distribution here may have a middle class. Further, the status interaction involves an externality and an equilibrium wealth distribution may be Pareto inefficient. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

This paper advocates a generalized N-firm Stackelberg model as a plausible testable alternative description of oligopoly. A pure-strategy equilibrium must exist for this model. The main result is that efficiency obtains in the limit as the scale of each firm is shrunk relative to demand. This is demonstrated for the case of U-shaped average cost and also for that of natural monopoly. Copyright 1990 by American Economic Association.

This paper advocates a generalized N-firm Stackelberg model as a plausible testable alternative description of oligopoly. A pure-strategy equilibrium must exist for this model. The main result is that efficiency obtains in the limit as the scale of each firm is shrunk relative to demand. This is demonstrated for the case of U-shaped average cost and also for that of natural monopoly.

Consider the possible biological origin of the expected utility criterion. On the one hand, if individuals possess a utility function stemming from the rate of production of expected offspring, they can rapidly adapt to arbitrary unknown distributions in a bandit problem. Embedding such a utility function in a simple rule of thumb involving no beliefs about probabilities leads to evolutionary optimality. On the other hand, if any rule whatever yields evolutionary optimality for all distributions, this precise utility function must be implicit, in a revealed preference sense.

Alphabetical name order is the norm for joint publications in economics. However, alphabetical order confers greater benefits on the first author. In a two-author model, we introduce and study certified random order: the uniform randomization of names made universally known by a commonly understood symbol. Certified random order (i) distributes the gain from first authorship evenly over the alphabet; (ii) allows either author to signal when contributions are extremely unequal; (iii) will invade an environment where alphabetical order is dominant; (iv) is robust to deviations; (v) may be ex ante more efficient than alphabetical order; and (vi) is no more complex than the existing alphabetical system modified by occasional reversal of name order. (JEL A14, Z13)