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Beyond foraging: behavioral science and the future of institutional economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2007

ALEXANDER J. FIELD
ALEXANDER J. FIELD*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Santa Clara University
*
*Correspondence to: Department of Economics, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053. Email: afield@scu.edu
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Abstract:

Institutions affect economic outcomes, but variation in them cannot be directly linked to environmental factors such as geography, climate, or technological availabilities. Game theoretic approaches, based as they typically are on foraging only assumptions, do not provide an adequate foundation for understanding the intervening role of politics and ideology; nor does the view that culture and institutions are entirely socially constructed. Understanding what institutions are and how they influence behavior requires an approach that is in part biological, focusing on cognitive and behavioral adaptations for social interaction favored in the past by group selection. These adaptations, along with their effects on canalizing social learning, help to explain uniformities in political and social order, and are the bedrock upon which we build cultural and institutional variability.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , December 2007 , pp. 265 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2007

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