Information, evolution and utility

Jeroen Swinkels () and Larry Samuelson ()
Additional contact information
Larry Samuelson: University of Wisconsin

Theoretical Economics, 2006, vol. 1, issue 1, pages 119-142

Abstract: Human utility embodies a number of seemingly irrational aspects. The leading example in this paper is that utilities often depend on the presence of salient unchosen alternatives. Our focus is to understand why an evolutionary process might optimally lead to such seemingly dysfunctional features in our motivations and to derive implications for the nature of our utility functions.

Keywords: Evolution; information; internal conflict; self control; temptation; time consistency; utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C72 D80 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006 Written 2006-03-02
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/view/20060119/15 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Economics is edited by Jeffrey C. Ely, Edward Green, Barton L. Lipman, Martin J. Osborne, and Debraj Ray

More articles in Theoretical Economics from Society for Economic Theory
Series data maintained by Martin J. Osborne ().