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In a wide variety of settings, spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation, trade, and thus economic development. This paper shows that spiteful preferences - the desire to reduce another's material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one's relative payoff - are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in India (Uttar Pradesh). In a one-shot trust game, the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects. In experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences, the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another's material payoff - either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead - is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes. Because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status-seeking, it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture. Thus, an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development.

Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress --- Competitive Advantage --- Corporate Law --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory and Research --- Equilibrium --- Expected returns --- Expected utility --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Free riders --- Future research --- Gender --- Gender and Social Development --- Law and Development --- Macroeconomics --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Marginal cost --- Public good --- Utility function

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Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good? Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin. In A Cooperative Species, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers. The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups. Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment. Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition, A Cooperative Species provides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.

Cooperation. --- Cooperativeness. --- Behavior evolution. --- Behavioral evolution --- Cooperation (Psychology) --- Collaborative economy --- Cooperative distribution --- Cooperative movement --- Distribution, Cooperative --- Peer-to-peer economy --- Sharing economy --- Evolutionary psychology --- Social psychology --- Economics --- Profit-sharing --- Cooperation --- Cooperativeness --- Behavior evolution --- E-books --- Australia. --- altruism. --- altruistic cooperation. --- altruistic punishment. --- ancestral humans. --- behavior. --- beliefs. --- coevolution. --- common good. --- constraints. --- coordinated punishment. --- correlated equilibrium. --- costly signaling. --- cultural transmission. --- culture. --- early humans. --- equilibrium selection. --- ethical norms. --- evolution. --- evolutionary dynamics. --- fitness-reducing norm. --- fitness. --- folk theorem. --- foragers. --- free-riders. --- free-riding. --- gene-culture coevolution. --- genetic differentiation. --- genetic inheritance. --- group competition. --- group membership. --- guilt. --- helping behavior. --- hostility. --- human cooperation. --- hunter-gatherer society. --- inclusive fitness. --- indirect reciprocity. --- institutions. --- intergroup conflict. --- internalization. --- multi-level selection. --- norms. --- parochial altruism. --- parochialism. --- peer pressure. --- phenotypic expression. --- positive assortment. --- preferences. --- prehistoric human society. --- private information. --- prosocial behavior. --- public goods game. --- public information. --- punishment. --- reciprocal altruism. --- repeated game. --- reproductive leveling. --- sacrifice. --- selective extinction. --- self-interest. --- shame. --- social behavior. --- social dilemmas. --- social emotions. --- social institutions. --- social interactions. --- social norms. --- social order. --- social preferences. --- socialization. --- sociobiology. --- strong reciprocity. --- within-group segmentation.