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Northwestern University

Mini-Courses

Each year, the CMS-EMS and CET will invite to campus a distinguished scholar to give a mini-course on a topic of current interest. This mini-course is open to all members of the Northwestern community as well as visitors from other Colleges and Universities.

The inaugural 'teacher' in the series is Professor Arthur Robson of Simon Fraser University. Robson is the Canada Research Chair in Economic Theory and Evolution and Fellow of the Econometric Society. His mini-course will be on economics and evolution.

Course Schedule:

Monday March 10
12:10-1:10pm
Jacobs Center Room G45

Tuesday March 11
12:10-1:10pm
Jacobs Center Room G45

Wednesday March 12
3:30 to 5:00pm
Jacobs Center Room G36

Thursday March 13
12:10-1:10pm
Jacobs Center Room G45

Friday March 14
12:10-1:10pm
Jacobs Center Room G43

Topics will be based on these readings:

INTRODUCTION
        Robson, A.J. "The Biological Basis of Economic Behavior," J. Econ. Lit. 29 (2001), 11-33.
        Robson, A.J. "Evolution and Human Nature," J. Econ. Perspectives 16 (2002), 89-106.

UTILITY
        Robson, A.J. "Why Would Nature Give Individuals Utility Functions?," J. Polit. Econ. 109 (2001), 900-914.
        Rayo, L., and Becker, G. "Evolutionary Efficiency and Happiness," University of Chicago WP (2005).

 
RISK
        Bergstrom, T.C "Storage for Good Times and Bad: Of Rats and Men," UCSB WP (2005).
        Cooper W. S., R. H. Kaplan. 1982. Adaptive "coin-flipping": a decision-theoretic examination of natural selection for random individual variation. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 94:135--151.
        Grafen, A. "Formal Darwinism, the individual-as-maximizing-agent analogy and bet-hedging," Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 266, 799-803.
        Karni, E. and Schmeidler, D. "Self-Preservation as a Foundation of Rational Behavior Under Risk," J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 1986, 7, 71-82.
        Robson, A.J. "A Biological Basis for Expected and Non-Expected Utility," J. Econ. Theory, 1996, 68, 397-424.
        Robson, A.J. "The Evolution of Attitudes to Risk: Lottery Tickets and Relative Wealth," Games Econ. Behav. 1996, 14, 190-207.

ALTRUISM TO KIN
        Bergstrom, T.C. "On the Evolution of Altruistic Rules for Siblings," Amer. Econ. Rev. 1995, 85, 58-81.
        Bergstrom, T.C. "Economics in a Family Way," J. Econ. Lit. 1996, 34, 1903-1934.

TIME PREFERENCE
        Dasgupta, P. and Maskin, E. "Uncertainty and Hyperbolic Discounting," Amer. Econ. Rev. 1995, 95, 1290-1299.
        Hansson, I. and Stuart, C. "Malthusian Selection of Preferences," Amer. Econ. Rev. 1990, 80, 529-544.
        Robson, A and Samuelson L "The Evolution of Intertemporal Preferences", American Economic Review 97 (2007), 496-500.
        _________________________"The Evolution of Impatience with Aggregate Uncertainty" WP, Yale and SFU
        Robson, A.J. and Szentes, B. "Evolution of Time Preference by Natural Selection: Comment''  American Economic Review forthcoming.
        Robson, A.J., Szentes, B., and Iantchev, E. "On the Evolution of Time Preference," Chicago WP (2006)
        Rogers, A. "Evolution of Time Preference by Natural Selection," Amer. Econ. Rev. 1994, 84, 460-481.
        Sozou, P. "On Hyperbolic Discounting and Uncertain Hazard Rates," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B 265 (1998), 2015-2020.




 

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