Advice, Social Learning and the Evolution of Conventions

Advice, Social Learning and the Evolution of Conventions

Author: Andrew Schotter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781009048880

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As societies progress, old generations of social agents die and are replaced by new ones. This book explores what happens in this transition as the old guard instructs the new arrivals about the wisdom of their ways. Do new entrants listen and follow the advice of their elders or dismiss it? Is intergenerational advice welfare improving or can it be destructive? Does such advice enhance the stability of social conventions or disrupt it? Using the concept of an Intergenerational Game and the tools of game theory and experimental economics, this study delves into the process of social leaning created by intergenerational advice passed from generation to generation. This book presents a unique theoretical and empirical study of the dynamics of social conventions not offered elsewhere.


Advice, Social Learning and the Evolution of Conventions

Advice, Social Learning and the Evolution of Conventions

Author: Andrew Schotter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-01-23

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1009058959

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As societies progress, old generations of social agents die and are replaced by new ones. This book explores what happens in this transition as the old guard instructs the new arrivals about the wisdom of their ways. Do new entrants listen and follow the advice of their elders or dismiss it? Is intergenerational advice welfare improving or can it be destructive? Does such advice enhance the stability of social conventions or disrupt it? Using the concept of an Intergenerational Game and the tools of game theory and experimental economics, this study delves into the process of social leaning created by intergenerational advice passed from generation to generation. This book presents a unique theoretical and empirical study of the dynamics of social conventions not offered elsewhere.


Misunderstandings

Misunderstandings

Author: Georg Weizsäcker

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1805111388

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What do we expect when we say something to someone, and what do they expect when they hear it? When is a conversation successful? The book considers a wide set of two-person conversations, and a bit of game theory, to show how conversational statements and their interpretations are governed by beliefs. Thinking about beliefs is suitable for communication analysis because beliefs are well-defined and measurable, allowing to differentiate between successful understandings and their less successful counterparts: misunderstandings. The book describes the theoretical framework and empirical measurements of misunderstandings – written by an economist, but in simple words and using interdisciplinary concepts. The material will benefit students and researchers of behavioural economics and its neighbouring fields, and anyone interested in human language.


Individual Strategy and Social Structure

Individual Strategy and Social Structure

Author: H. Peyton Young

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-06-16

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0691214255

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Neoclassical economics as-sumes that people are highly rational and can reason their way through even the most complex economic problems. In Individual Strategy and Social Structure, Peyton Young argues for a more realistic view in which people have a limited understanding of their environment, are sometimes short-sighted, and occasionally act in perverse ways. He shows how the cumulative experiences of many such individuals coalesce over time into customs, norms, and institutions that govern economic and social life. He develops a theory that predicts how such institutions evolve and characterizes their welfare properties. The ideas are illustrated through a variety of examples, including patterns of residential segregation, rules of the road, claims on property, forms of economic contracts, and norms of equity. The book relies on new results in evolutionary game theory and stochastic dynamical systems theory, many of them originated by the author. It can serve as an introductory text, or be read on its own as a contribution to the study of economic and social institutions.


Social Psychology and Economics

Social Psychology and Economics

Author: David De Cremer

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1135811008

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This book combines chapters written by leading social psychologists and economists, illuminating the developing trends in explaining and understanding economic behavior in a social world. It provides insights from both fields, communicated by eloquent scholars, and demonstrates through recent research and theory how economic behaviors may be more effectively examined using a combination of both fields. Social Psychology and Economics comes at a particularly fitting time, as a psychological approach to economics has begun to flourish in recent years, and papers exploring the intersection of these two disciplines have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, opening a dynamic dialogue between previously separated fields. This volume, the first in the Society for Judgment and Decision Making Series since acquired by Psychology Press, includes chapters by economists and psychologists. It addresses a variety of economic phenomena within a social context, such as scarcity and materialism, emphasizing the importance of integrating social psychology and economics. Social Psychology and Economics is arranged in seven parts that discuss: an introduction to the topic; preferences, utility, and choice; emotions; reciprocity, cooperation, and fairness; social distance; challenges to social psychology and economics; and collaborative reflections and projections. The market for this book is students, researchers, and professionals in the disciplines of economics, psychology, business, and behavioral decision making. Graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students will consider it a useful supplemental text.


Social and Economic Networks

Social and Economic Networks

Author: Matthew O. Jackson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 519

ISBN-13: 140083399X

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Networks of relationships help determine the careers that people choose, the jobs they obtain, the products they buy, and how they vote. The many aspects of our lives that are governed by social networks make it critical to understand how they impact behavior, which network structures are likely to emerge in a society, and why we organize ourselves as we do. In Social and Economic Networks, Matthew Jackson offers a comprehensive introduction to social and economic networks, drawing on the latest findings in economics, sociology, computer science, physics, and mathematics. He provides empirical background on networks and the regularities that they exhibit, and discusses random graph-based models and strategic models of network formation. He helps readers to understand behavior in networked societies, with a detailed analysis of learning and diffusion in networks, decision making by individuals who are influenced by their social neighbors, game theory and markets on networks, and a host of related subjects. Jackson also describes the varied statistical and modeling techniques used to analyze social networks. Each chapter includes exercises to aid students in their analysis of how networks function. This book is an indispensable resource for students and researchers in economics, mathematics, physics, sociology, and business.


The Origins of Unfairness

The Origins of Unfairness

Author: Cailin O'Connor

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0198789971

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In almost every human society some people get more and others get less. Why is inequity the rule in these societies? In The Origins of Unfairness, philosopher Cailin O'Connor firstly considers how groups are divided into social categories, like gender, race, and religion, to address this question. She uses the formal frameworks of game theory and evolutionary game theory to explore the cultural evolution of the conventions which piggyback on these seemingly irrelevant social categories. These frameworks elucidate a variety of topics from the innateness of gender differences, to collaboration in academia, to household bargaining, to minority disadvantage, to homophily. They help to show how inequity can emerge from simple processes of cultural change in groups with gender and racial categories, and under a wide array of situations. The process of learning conventions of coordination and resource division is such that some groups will tend to get more and others less. O'Connor offers solutions to such problems of coordination and resource division and also shows why we need to think of inequity as part of an ever evolving process. Surprisingly minimal conditions are needed to robustly produce phenomena related to inequity and, once inequity emerges in these models, it takes very little for it to persist indefinitely. Thus, those concerned with social justice must remain vigilant against the dynamic forces that push towards inequity.


Simulating Social Complexity

Simulating Social Complexity

Author: Bruce Edmonds

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-24

Total Pages: 833

ISBN-13: 3319669486

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This volume examines all aspects of using agent or individual-based simulation. This approach represents systems as individual elements having their own set of differing states and internal processes. The interactions between elements in the simulation represent interactions in the target systems. What makes this "social" is that it can represent an observed society. Social systems include all those systems where the components have individual agency but also interact with each other. This includes human societies and groups, but also increasingly socio-technical systems where the internet-based devices form the substrate for interaction. These systems are central to our lives, but are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible but, on the other hand, natural language approaches are also inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. This is why individual and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. This handbook marks the maturation of this new field. It brings together summaries of the best thinking and practices in this area from leading researchers in the field and constitutes a reference point for standards against which future methodological advances can be judged. This second edition adds new chapters on different modelling purposes and applying software engineering methods to simulation development. Revised existing content will keep the book up-to-date with recent developments. This volume will help those new to the field avoid "reinventing the wheel" each time, and give them a solid and wide grounding in the essential issues. It will also help those already in the field by providing accessible overviews of current thought. The material is divided into four sections: Introduction, Methodology, Mechanisms, and Applications. Each chapter starts with a very brief section called ‘Why read this chapter?’ followed by an abstract, which summarizes the content of the chapter. Each chapter also ends with a section on ‘Further Reading’. Whilst sometimes covering technical aspects, this second edition of Simulating Social Complexity is designed to be accessible to a wide range of researchers, including both those from the social sciences as well as those with a more formal background. It will be of use as a standard reference text in the field and also be suitable for graduate level courses.


Game Theory

Game Theory

Author: Michael Maschler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-06-25

Total Pages: 1053

ISBN-13: 1108493459

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This new edition is unparalleled in breadth of coverage, thoroughness of technical explanations and number of worked examples.


Evolution of the Social Contract

Evolution of the Social Contract

Author: Brian Skyrms

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-10-30

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1107434289

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This new edition further develops the application of evolutionary game theory to an analysis of the origins of social contracts.