Learning and Evolutionary Game Theory

Important Scientific Research and Open Questions Finally, there are many interesting research projects related to learning and the evolution of social norms that could be highlighted: (a) the “economic anthropology” of Herbert Gintis and Samuel Bowles, which is basedmainly on EGT tools, reviewing topics such as the importance and origins of reciprocity, fairness and cooperation in primitive societies, and the measure of social norms and preferences using experimental games (see Bowles 2004; Gintis 2000); (b) the work on the “evolution of preferences” as developed by Werner Güth (see Heifetz 2005); (c) the study of the “evolution of social norms in specific economic settings” – an excellent example here is provided by the work of Sethi and Somanathan (1996) which examines the problem of the exploitation of a common property resource within an evolutionary game theoretic framework– and (d) the “evolution of rationality,” where social norm-guided behavior, which is associated with a nonrational conduct, is contrasted with rational, optimizing, behavior (see Banerjee and Weibull 1994) (see Vega-Redondo 1996: 85).