On cultural evolution: Social norms, rational behavior, and evolutionary game theory

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine evolutionary game theory as a tool for analyzing issues on the diversity, interaction, and evolution of social systems and to discuss some of the results obtained in the field. For the purpose, the present paper is very selective in coverage, introducing only papers that are relevant for our discussion. Hence, the reader should be aware of the limits of this paper as a survey. This paper is written for non-game-theorists who have an interest in game theory and, in particular, evolutionary game theory. Definitions and notation are sometimes a little imprecise in order to increase accessibility of the paper. Some mathematical expressions are introduced, but they can be ignored when reading the paper casually. J. Japan. Int. Econ., September 1996, 10(3), pp. 262-294. Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104; and Institute of Socio-economic Planning, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan. © 1996 Academic Press, Inc.