← Search

Econometrica Vol. 81 No. 6 2013

Homo Moralis--Preference Evolution Under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching

Ingela Alger1,2,3,4; Jörgen W. Weibull5,6,7,8,3

1 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique · 2 Toulouse School of Economics · 3 Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse · 4 Laboratoire d'Économie des Ressources Naturelles · 5 Goethe University Frankfurt · 6 Conference Board · 7 École Polytechnique · 8 Stockholm School of Economics

open access

Abstract

What preferences will prevail in a society of rational individuals when preference evolution is driven by the resulting payoffs? We show that when individuals' preferences are their private information, a convex combination of selfishness and morality stands out as evolutionarily stable. We call individuals with such preferences homo moralis. At one end of the spectrum is homo oeconomicus, who acts so as to maximize his or her own payoff. At the opposite end is homo kantiensis, who does what would be “the right thing to do,” in terms of payoffs, if all others would do likewise. We show that the stable degree of morality—the weight placed on the moral goal—is determined by the degree of assortativity in the process whereby individuals are matched to interact.

DOI
10.3982/ecta10637
Volume
81
Issue
6
Pages
2269-2302
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite