IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbioec/v20y2018i1d10.1007_s10818-017-9254-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evolution, finance, and the population genetics of relative wealth

Author

Listed:
  • H. Allen Orr

    (University of Rochester)

Abstract

Attempts to use evolutionary ideas in finance have often neglected mathematical population genetics. Population genetics provides a natural approach to certain problems in finance that involve the relative wealth that accrues to competing investment strategies. In our model, competing investment strategies differ only in their allocation to a risky asset versus a riskless asset. Here we use results from the population genetics of natural selection to find the investment strategy that maximizes the expected increase in relative wealth. Though we focus on single-period analysis, some of our key findings are reminiscent of those from the growth optimal portfolio literature, e.g., the Kelly criterion.

Suggested Citation

  • H. Allen Orr, 2018. "Evolution, finance, and the population genetics of relative wealth," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 29-48, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:20:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s10818-017-9254-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s10818-017-9254-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10818-017-9254-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10818-017-9254-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 95-144, March.
    2. Terje Lensberg & Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppe, 2006. "On the Evolution of Investment Strategies and the Kelly Rule – A Darwinian Approach," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 06-38, Swiss Finance Institute.
    3. Igor Evstigneev & Thorsten Hens & Klaus Schenk-Hoppé, 2006. "Evolutionary stable stock markets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 27(2), pages 449-468, January.
    4. Armen A. Alchian, 1950. "Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3), pages 211-211.
    5. Robson, Arthur J, 1992. "Status, the Distribution of Wealth, Private and Social Attitudes to Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(4), pages 837-857, July.
    6. Clark, Andrew E. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "Satisfaction and comparison income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 359-381, September.
    7. Hens, Thorsten & Schenk-Hoppe, Klaus Reiner, 2005. "Evolutionary stability of portfolio rules in incomplete markets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 43-66, February.
    8. Robert M. Bell & Thomas M. Cover, 1980. "Competitive Optimality of Logarithmic Investment," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 161-166, May.
    9. Terence C. Burnham & Aimee Dunlap & David W. Stephens, 2015. "Experimental Evolution and Economics," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(4), pages 21582440156, November.
    10. Thomas J. Brennan & Andrew W. Lo, 2011. "The Origin of Behavior," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(01), pages 55-108.
    11. Bakshi, Gurdip S & Chen, Zhiwu, 1996. "The Spirit of Capitalism and Stock-Market Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 133-157, March.
    12. Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 1997. "On relative wealth effects and the optimality of growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 87-92, January.
    13. Blume, Lawrence & Easley, David, 1992. "Evolution and market behavior," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 9-40, October.
    14. Park, Sangkyun, 2009. "Portfolio choice when relative income matters," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 530-533, June.
    15. George J. Mailath & Harold L. Cole & Andrew Postlewaite, 2001. "original papers : Investment and concern for relative position," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 6(2), pages 241-261.
    16. Blume, Lawrence E. & Easley, David, 1993. "Economic natural selection," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 42(2-3), pages 281-289.
    17. Igor V. Evstigneev & Thorsten Hens & Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppé, 2011. "Survival and Evolutionary Stability of the Kelly Rule," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & Edward O Thorp & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE KELLY CAPITAL GROWTH INVESTMENT CRITERION THEORY and PRACTICE, chapter 20, pages 273-284, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. I. V. Evstigneev & T. Hens & M. J. Vanaei, 2023. "Evolutionary finance: a model with endogenous asset payoffs," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 117-143, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew W. Lo & H. Allen Orr & Ruixun Zhang, 2018. "The growth of relative wealth and the Kelly criterion," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 49-67, April.
    2. Igor V. Evstigneev & Thorsten Hens & Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppé, 2008. "Evolutionary Finance," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 08-14, Swiss Finance Institute.
    3. Hirshleifer, David & Lo, Andrew W. & Zhang, Ruixun, 2023. "Social contagion and the survival of diverse investment styles," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    4. Ed Hopkins, 2008. "Inequality, happiness and relative concerns: What actually is their relationship?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(4), pages 351-372, December.
    5. Oindrila Dey & Swapnendu Banerjee, 2022. "Incentives, Status and Thereafter: A Critical Survey," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 11(1), pages 95-115, June.
    6. Lombardo, Vincenzo, 2012. "Social inclusion and the emergence of development traps," MPRA Paper 36766, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Ulrich Horst & Jan Wezelburger, 2006. "Non-ergodic Behavior in a Financial Market with Interacting Investors," 2006 Meeting Papers 229, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Bilancini, Ennio & D'Alessandro, Simone, 2012. "Long-run welfare under externalities in consumption, leisure, and production: A case for happy degrowth vs. unhappy growth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 194-205.
    9. Dindo, Pietro & Massari, Filippo, 2020. "The wisdom of the crowd in dynamic economies," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(4), November.
    10. Igor V. EVSTIGNEEVY & Thorsten HENS & Klaus Reiner SCHENK-HOPPE, 2010. "An evolutionary financial market model with a risk-free asset," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 10-36, Swiss Finance Institute.
    11. Amir, Rabah & Evstigneev, Igor V. & Hens, Thorsten & Schenk-Hoppe, Klaus Reiner, 2005. "Market selection and survival of investment strategies," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 105-122, February.
    12. Mikhail Zhitlukhin, 2020. "A continuous-time asset market game with short-lived assets," Papers 2008.13230, arXiv.org.
    13. Hopkins, Ed & Kornienko, Tatiana, 2009. "Status, affluence, and inequality: Rank-based comparisons in games of status," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 552-568, November.
    14. Stark, Oded & Szczygielski, Krzysztof, 2019. "The likelihood of divorce and the riskiness of financial decisions," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(3), pages 209-229, September.
    15. Ed Hopkins & Tatiana Kornienko, 2004. "Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1085-1107, September.
    16. Cherkashin, Dmitriy & Farmer, J. Doyne & Lloyd, Seth, 2009. "The reality game," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1091-1105, May.
      • Dmitriy Cherkashin & J. Doyne Farmer & Seth Lloyd, 2009. "The Reality Game," Papers 0902.0100, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2009.
    17. Palczewski, Jan & Schenk-Hoppé, Klaus Reiner, 2010. "From discrete to continuous time evolutionary finance models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 913-931, May.
    18. Anufriev, M. & Dindo, P.D.E., 2007. "Wealth Selection in a Financial Market with Heterogeneous Agents," CeNDEF Working Papers 07-10, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    19. Hommes, Cars H., 2006. "Heterogeneous Agent Models in Economics and Finance," Handbook of Computational Economics, in: Leigh Tesfatsion & Kenneth L. Judd (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 23, pages 1109-1186, Elsevier.
    20. Palczewski, Jan & Schenk-Hoppé, Klaus Reiner, 2010. "Market selection of constant proportions investment strategies in continuous time," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 248-266, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:20:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s10818-017-9254-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.