Evolutionary economics

Evolutionary economics is a school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology. Although not defined by a strict set of principles and uniting various approaches, it treats economic development as a process rather than an equilibrium and emphasizes change (qualitative, organisational, and structural), innovation, complex interdependencies, self-evolving systems, and limited rationality as the drivers of economic evolution. The support for the evolutionary approach to economics in recent decades seems to have initially emerged as a criticism of the mainstream neoclassical economics, but by the beginning of the 21st century it had become part of the economic mainstream itself. Evolutionary economics does not take the characteristics of either the objects of choice or of the decision-maker as fixed. Rather, it focuses on the non-equilibrium processes that transform the economy from within and their implications, considering interdependencies and feedback. The processes in turn emerge from the actions of diverse agents with bounded rationality who may learn from experience and interactions and whose differences contribute to the change. The idea of human society and the world in general as subject to evolution has been following the mankind throughout its existence. Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet thought to be the first Western written poet regarding himself as an individual, described five Ages of Man – the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Heroic Age, and the Iron Age – following from divine existence to toil and misery. Modern scholars consider his works as one of the sources for early economic thought. The concept is also present in the Metamorphoses by an ancient Roman poet Ovid. His Four Ages include technological progress: in the Golden Age, men did not know arts and craft, whereas by the Iron Age people had learnt and discovered agriculture, architecture, mining, navigation, and national boundaries, but had also become violent and greedy.

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Evolutionary economics

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Environmental care and morality: An economic model with heterogeneous agents

Boris Thurm, Charles Chadi Ayoubi

Some individuals voluntarily engage in costly pro-environmental actions although their efforts have limited direct benefits. This paper proposes a novel economic model with heterogeneous agents explaining why. Each agent has a homo moralis type of preference, which combines selfishness and morality. Morality is modeled here as the payoff an agent receives if all other agents act like her. Our model builds on extant literature showing that homo moralis preferences have an evolutionary advantage to better evaluate the behavioral motives of agents. Shedding light on how people respond not only to economic but also moral incentives, we contribute to the ongoing policy debate on the design of efficient environmental policies.

2020

A heterogeneous evolutionary stable population under assortative matching: Exploring the diversity of preferences

Boris Thurm, Charles Chadi Ayoubi

Recent studies have shown that a population acting not only upon self-interest but also exhibiting some morality preference has an evolutionary advantage. Specifically, in the setting of a symmetric fitness game, a resident population is evolutionary stable against all types of mutants if it has the utility function of Homo-moralis, with a morality equal to the assortativity. In this paper, we extend the scope of analysis allowing for the presence of a diversity of preferences in the population. Establishing a Payoff Equality condition, we prove the possibility of co-existence of two residents in the population. We then introduce a tripartite assortment function and study the conditions for the evolutionary stability of this diverse population. In the case of a constant assortment function, we show the existence of an evolutionary stable and heterogeneous resident population.

2017

Evolutionally dynamic control of LINE-1 elements in embryonic stem cells

Natali Pennese

Mobile elements are important evolutionary forces that challenge genomic integrity. Long interspersed element-1 (L1, also known as LINE-1) is the only autonomous transposon still active in the human genome. It displays an unusual pattern of evolution, with at any given time a single active L1 lineage amplifying to thousands of copies before getting replaced by a new lineage likely under pressure of host restriction factors, which act notably by silencing L1 expression during early embryogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that in human embryonic stem cells (hESC) KAP1, the master co-factor of KRAB-containing zinc finger proteins (KRAB-ZFP) previously implicated in the restriction of endogenous retroviruses, represses a discrete subset of L1 lineages predicted to have entered the ancestral genome between 26.8 and 7.6 million years ago. In the mouse, we documented a similar chronologically conditioned pattern, albeit with a much contracted time scale. We could further identify an L1-binding KRAB-ZFP, suggesting that this rapidly evolving protein family is more globally responsible for L1 recognition. KAP1 knockdown in hESC induced the expression of KAP1-bound L1 elements, but their younger, human-specific counterparts (L1Hs) were unaffected. Instead, they were stimulated by depleting DNA methyltransferases, consistent with recent evidence demonstrating that the PIWI-piRNA pathway regulates L1Hs in hESC. Altogether, these data indicate that the early embryonic control of L1 is an evolutionary dynamic process, and support a model whereby newly emerged lineages are first suppressed by DNA methylation-inducing small RNA-based mechanisms, before KAP1-recruiting protein repressors are selected.

EPFL2015

Climate Economics: Solar Radiation Management ENV-724: Climate economics for Engineers

Explores climate economics, focusing on solar radiation management and the challenges of changing preferences to mitigate climate change.

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Explores climate economics, solar radiation management, and preference change in the context of innovation and policy levers.

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