The Evolutionary Foundations of Preferences

Arthur J. Robson is Professor of Economics Emeritus at Simon Fraser University. He has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, at the Becker-Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago, and at Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Econometric Society, and he has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Larry Samuelson is A. Douglas Melamed Professor of Economics at Yale University. He works in economic theory, with a particular interest in the evolutionary foundations of economic behavior. He has served as a coeditor of Econometrica, the American Economic Review, and the American Economic Review: Insights. He has served as president of the Game Theory Society and the Econometric Society.

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• 1. Introduction; 2. Evolution of utility functions; 3. Impatience; 4. Discounting quality and quantity; 5. Risk; 6. Risk in age-structured populations; 7. Discounting and risk; 8. Adaptive utility; 9. The biotechnology of adaptive utility; 10. Engines of adaptation; 11. Hedonic utility; 12. Conclusions; Index.