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Social Hierarchy and the Evolution of Behavior

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  • Jiabin Wu

    (Department of Economics, University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403, USA)

Abstract

This paper investigates how behavior evolves in a society with a social hierarchy consisting of high and low positions. Agents first collectively negotiate for high positions through a political institution. Next, each high position agent is matched with a low position agent to engage in some asymmetric pairwise interaction, which generates economic outcomes for the two agents. These economic outcomes in turn influence the evolution of agents’ behavior. We find that this evolutionary process induces Pareto-enhancing behavior by high position agents but Pareto-damaging behavior by low position agents. We take this result into a production–redistribution game in which a low position agent exerts effort to produce and a high position agent decides how to redistribute the output. We show that inefficient work effort and a positive transfer are evolutionarily stable.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiabin Wu, 2017. "Social Hierarchy and the Evolution of Behavior," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(04), pages 1-16, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:igtrxx:v:19:y:2017:i:04:n:s0219198917500190
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219198917500190
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Xu, Hedong & Fan, Suohai & Tian, Cunzhi & Xiao, Xinrong, 2019. "Effect of strategy-assortativity on investor sharing games in the market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 514(C), pages 211-225.
    2. Jonathan Newton, 2018. "Evolutionary Game Theory: A Renaissance," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-67, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Evolutionary game theory; strategy evolution; asymmetric games; social hierarchy; political institution; work incentives; redistribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

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