“Civil society comes of age in economics: Tracking a century of research.” Economics Letters 246 (2025). [with Wendy Carlin and Sahana Subramanyam]
“The refinement paradox: Complex products of collective improvement favor conformist outcomes, blind copying, and hyper-credulity.” PLOS Computational Biology (2025). [with Elena Miu, Luke Rendell, et al.]
“The origins of enduring economic inequality.” Journal of Economic Literature 62(4) (2024): 1475-1537. [with Mattia Fochesato]
“Social Conflict and the Evolution of Unequal Conventions.” Journal of the European Economic Association 22(5) (2024): 2261-2293. [with Sung Ha Hwang and Suresh Naidu]
“Fredrich Hayek’s economy of knowledge.” Foundational Papers in Complexity Science, Santa Fe Institute Press (2024).
“Herbert Gintis and the societal origins of preferences.” Review of Radical Political Economics 56(1) (2024): 146-151.
“Does Studying Economics Make You Selfish?” Southern Economic Journal 90(3) (2024): 792-814. [with Daniele, Girardi, Sai Madhurika Mamunuru and Simon Halliday]
“Axioms and intuitions about societal inequality: What does the Gini coefficient measure?”Journal of Income Distribution 32(3-4) (2024). [with Wendy Carlin]
“Can Marshall plus Malthus explain the evolution of ancient societies? A review of Economic Prehistory by Dow and Reed.” Journal of Economic Literature 62(3) (2024): 1213-29. [with Amy Bogaard]
“The coherence and relevance of core econ’s new benchmark model.” Advances in Economics Education 2(2) (2023): 127-44. [with Wendy Carlin]
“Review of Graeber & Wengrow, The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity.” Journal of Economic Literature 61(3) (2023): 1190-98.
“Moral Economics.” Fiscal Studies 44(2) (2023): 151-60.
“A biological employment model of reproductive inequality.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Biology) 378(1883) (2023). [with Peter Hammerstein]
“Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120(22) (2023). [with Cody T. Ross, Paul Hooper, Jennifer Smith]
“Behavioral mechanism design. A comment on Chater and Loewenstein, The i-frame and the s-frame.” Behavior and Brain Sciences 46 (2023).
“Foundations of an Expanded Community of Fate.” Daedalus, 152 Creating a New Moral Political Economy (1). (2023) [with Wendy Carlin]
“Opposition to voluntary and mandated COVID-19 vaccination as a dynamic process: Evidence and policy implications of changing beliefs.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). [with Katrin Schmelz]
“Shrinking capitalism: Components of a new paradigm for political economy.” Oxford Review of Economic Policy. (2021). [with Wendy Carlin]
“Overcoming COVID-19 Vaccination Resistance When Alternative Policies Affect the Dynamics of Conformism, Social Norms and Crowding-Out.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 118(25) (2021). [with Katrin Schmelz]
-
Popular version of the above is “How policies affect beliefs and preferences: The example of covid-19 willingness.” VOX EU (1 July 2021) [with Katrin Schmelz]
“Inequality as experienced difference: A reformulation of the Gini coefficient.” Economics Letters 186 (2020): 1-3. [with Wendy Carlin]
“The coming battle for the Covid-19 narrative.” VOX EU (10 April 2020) [with Wendy Carlin]
“How institutions and cultures change: An evolutionary perspective.” In The Handbook of Historical Economics, edited by Alberto Bisin and Giovanni Federico, 389-431. Elsevier. (2020). [with Jung-Kyoo Choi, Sung Ha Hwang, and Suresh Naidu]
“Shrinking capitalism.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 110(5) (2020): 1-5. [with Wendy Carlin]
“Civic culture, state capacities and war: a comment.” Econometrica 88(4) (2020): 337-1343.
“What Students Learn in Economics 101: Time for a Change.” Journal of Economic Literature 58(1) (2020): 176-214. [with Wendy Carlin]
“The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and the Origin of Private Property.” Journal of Political Economy 127(5) (2020): 1993-2568. [with Jung-Kyoo Choi]
“Differences between sons and daughters in the intergenerational transmission of wealth.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Biology) 374 (2019). [with Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Mary C. Towner, Ryan Baldini, Bret A. Beheim, Heidi Colleran, Michael Gurven, Karen L. Kramer, Siobhan M. Mattison, David A. Nolin, Brooke A. Scelza, Rebecca Sear, Mary K. Shenk, Eckart Voland and John Ziker]
“The farming-inequality nexus: new insights from ancient Western Eurasia.” Antiquity 93(371) (2019): 1129-1143. [with Mattia Fochesato and Amy Bogaard]
“Comparing ancient inequalities: the challenges of comparability, bias and precision.” Antiquity 93(370) (2019): 853-869. [with Mattia Fochesato and Amy Bogaard]
“Institution shocks and economic outcomes: Allende’s election, Pinochet’s coup and the Santiago stock market.” Journal of Development Economics 134 (2018): 16-27. [with Daniele Girardi]
Marx and Modern Economics, Vox CEPR Policy Portal, 21 April 2018
“Greater Wealth Inequality, Less Polygyny: Rethinking the polygyny threshold model.” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 15(144) (2018) [with Cody T. Ross, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Seung-Yun Oh, Bret Beheim, John Bunce, Mark Caudell, Gregory Clark, Heidi Colleran, Carmen Cortez, Patricia Draper, Russell D. Greaves, Michael Gurven, Thomas Headland, Janet Headland, Kim Hill , Barry Hewlett, Hillard S. Kaplan, Jeremy Koster, Karen Kramer, Frank Marlowe, Richard McElreath, David Nolin, Marsha Quinlan, Robert Quinlan, Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Brooke Scelza, Ryan Schacht, Mary Shenk, Ray Uehara, Eckart Voland, Kai Willführ, Bruce Winterhalder and John Ziker]
“Farming, Inequality and Urbanization: A Comparative Analysis of Late Prehistoric Northern Mesopotamia and South-West Germany.“ In Quantifying Ancient Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences. Amerind Foundation, edited by T. A. Kohler and M. E. Smith. (2017)[with Bogaard, Amy; Amy Styring; Jade Whitlam; Mattia Fochesato and Samuel Bowles]
“Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia Than in North America and Mesoamerica.” Nature, 551(7680) (2017): 619-22. [with Timothy A. Kohler, Michael E. Smith, Amy Bogaard, Gary M. Feinman, Christian E. Peterson, Alleen Betzenhauser, Matthew Pailes, Elizabeth C. Stone, Anna Marie Prentiss, Timothy J. Dennehy, Laura J. Ellyson, Linda M. Nicholas, Ronald K. Faulseit, Amy Styring, Jade Whitlam, Mattia Fochesato, Thomas A. Foor]
“Persistence and Change in Culture and Institutions under Autarchy, Trade, and Factor Mobility.” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 9(4) (2017): 245-276. [with Marianna Belloc]
“The Evolution of Egalitarian Sociolinguistic Conventions.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 107(5) (2017): 1-7. [with Suresh Naidu and Sung-Ha Hwang]
“Retrospectives: Friedrich Hayek and the Market Algorithm.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31(3) (2017): 215-230. [with Alan Kirman and Rajiv Sethi]
- A VOX EU column on Hayek here.
- Interview by David Sloan Wilson about Hayek’s economics and his politics here.
- Getting Hayek’s economic insights (along with Nash, Von Neumann and others) into Ec 10 here.
“Nordic Exceptionalism? Social Democratic Egalitarianism in World-Historic Perspective.” Journal of Public Economics 127 (2015): 30-44. [with Mattia Fochesato]
“Optimal Incentives with State-Dependent Preferences.” Journal of Public Economic Theory 16(5) (2014): 681-705. [with Sung-Ha Hwang]
“Nicolo Machiavelli and the Origins of Mechanism Design.” Journal of Economic Issues 48(2) (2014): 267-276.
Comment on Fry and Soderberg “Lethal Aggression in Mobile Forager Bands and Implications for the Origins of War.” 19 July 2013.
Review of James Heckman, Giving Kids a Fair Chance Science Vol. 340, May 31, 2013.
“The Persistence of Inferior Cultural-Institutional Conventions.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 103(3) (2013): 1-7. [with Marianna Belloc].
“Coevolution of Farming and Private Property During the Early Holocene.” PNAS 110(22) (2013): 8830-8735. [with Jung-Kyoo Choi].
“Group Inequality.” Journal of the European Economic Association 12(1) (2014): 129-152. [with R. Sethi and G. C. Loury].
- Comment in ScienceNews by Julie Rehmeyer Separate Is Never Equal: How Social Segregation Leads to Economic Inequality, June 4, 2011.
“Optimal Incentives with State-Dependent Preferences.” Journal of Public Economic Theory 16(5) (2012): 681-705. [with Sung-Ha Hwang].
“Is Altruism Bad for Cooperation?” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 83(3) (2012): 330-341. [with Sung-Ha Hwang]
“Veblen Effects, Political Representation, and the Reduction in Working Time over the 20th Century.“ Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 83(2) (2012): 218-242. [with Seung-Yun Oh and Yong-Jin Park]
“Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: Substitutes or Complements?” Journal of Economic Literature 50(2) (2012): 368-425. [with Sandra Polania-Reyes]
“Warriors, Levelers and the Role of Conflict in the Evolution of Social Behavior.” Science 336 (2012): 876-879.
“Linguistic Diversity and Economic Security are Complements.“ (in honor of Philippe van Parijs) 2012.
- The entire book is available here.
“A Cultural-Institutional Market Failure.” (in honor of Duncan Foley) 2012.
Three’s a Crowd: My Diner Party with Karl, Leon, and Maynard
A one act play in seven scenes. To celebrate the life and work of Tom Weisskopf, by Samuel Bowles
“History Lesson From the First Farmers.” New Scientist 2837 (2011): 26-27.
“Cultivation of Cereals by the First Farmers Was Not More Productive than Foraging.” PNAS 108(12) (2011): 4760-4765.
“Inequality and Network Structure.” Games and Economic Behavior 73 (2011): 215-226. [with Willemien Kets, Garud Iyengar and Rajiv Sethi]
“Is Liberal Society a Parasite on Tradition?” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 39(1) (2011).
“Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare.” Science 328(5978) (2010): 617-620. [with Robert Boyd and Herbert Gintis]
“Evolutionary Bargaining with Intentional Idiosyncratic Play.” Economics Letters 109(1) (2010): 31-33. [with S. Naidu and S.-H. Hwang]
Current Anthropology Symposium (2010) on Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth and Inequality in Premodern Societies
“Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies.” Science 326(5953) (2009): 682-88. [with M. Borgerhoff Mulder, T. Hertz, et al.]
“Did Warfare among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherer Groups Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?” Science 324(5932) (2009): 1293-98.
- Background for Journalists
- Commentary – The Economist, Independent (UK), New Scientist, Wired,Nature News
“When Economic Incentives Backfire.” Harvard Business Review, March 2009.
“Strong Reciprocity and Team Production: Theory and Evidence.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 71(2) (2009): 221-232. [with Jeffrey Carpenter, Herbert Gintis, and Sung-Ha Hwang].
“Conflict: Altruism’s Midwife.” Nature 456 (2008): 326-327 (November).
“Policies Designed for Self-Interested Citizens May Undermine ‘The Moral Sentiments’: Evidence from Economic Experiments.” Science 320(5883) (2008): 1605-1609. (June 20).
“Social Preferences and Public Economics: Mechanism Design when Social Preferences Depend on Incentives.” Journal of Public Economics 92 (2008): 1811-1820 [with Sung-Ha Hwang].
Remarks on “Moral Judgement: Evolutionary and Psychological Perspectives.” at the meeting of the AAAS, Boston, February 15, 2008.
Cooperation. In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2nd edition), edited by Lawrence Blume and Steven Durlauf. MacMillan, 2008. [with Herbert Gintis]
Power. In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2nd edition), edited by Lawrence Blume and Steven Durlauf. MacMillan, 2008. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Genetically Capitalist?” Science 318(5849) (2007): 394-396.
Review of G. Clark A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton University Press, 2007.
“The Coevolution of Parachial Altruism and War.” Science 319 (26 October 2007). [with Jung Kyoo Choi].
“Garrison America.” The Economists’ Voice 4(2). Berkeley Electronic Press, 2007. [with Arjun Jayadev]
Social Preferences, Homo Economicus and Zoon Politikon. In The Oxford Handbook of Work of Contextual Political Analysis, Eds. Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, [with Herbert Gintis].
“Group Competition, Reproductive Leveling, and The Evolution of Human Altruism.” Science 314 (2006): 1569-1572.
“Genetic Relatedness Predicts South African Migrant Workers’ Remittances to their Families.” Nature 434 (2005): 380-383. [with Deborah Posel]
“‘Economic Man’ in Cross-cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies.” Behavior and Brain Sciences 28(6) (2005): 795-815. [with Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, et al.]
“Emulation, Inequality, and Work Hours: Was Thorsten Veblen Right?” Economic Journal 115(507) (2005): F397-F412. [with Yong-Jin Park]
“Persistent Parochialism: Trust and Exclusion in Ethnic Networks.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 55(1) (2004): 1-23, [with Herbert Gintis].
“The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity: Cooperation in Heterogeneous Populations.” Theoretical Population Biology 65(1) (2004): 17-28, [with Herbert Gintis]
Does Market Theory Apply to Biology? In The Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation. edited by Peter Hammerstein. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. [with Peter Hammerstein]
“Explaining Altruistic Behavior in Humans.” Evolution and Human Behavior 24(3) (2003): 153-172, [with H. Gintis, R. Boyd, and E. Fehr]
“The Coevolution of Individual Behaviors and Social Institutions.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 223 (2003): 135-147, [with Jung-Kyoo Choi and Astrid Hopfensitz]
“Schooling in Capitalist America Revisited.” Sociology of Education 75(1) (2002): 1-18. [with Herbert Gintis]
“‘Social Capital’ and Community Governance.” Economic Journal 112(483) (2002): 419-436. [with Herbert Gintis]
“The Inheritance of Inequality.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16 (3) (2002): 3-30. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Costly Signaling and Cooperation.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 213(1) (2001): 103-119. [with Herbert Gintis, Eric Alden Smith].
“The Determinants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach.” Journal of Economic Literature 39(4) (2001): 1137-1176. [with Herbert Gintis and Melissa Osborne]
“Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior, and Earnings.” American Economic Review, 91(2) (2001): 155-158. [with Herbert Gintis and Melisssa Osborne]
“In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies.” American Economic Review, 91(2) (2001): 73-78. [with Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis and Richard McElreath]
“Walrasian Economics in Retrospect.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115(4) (2000): 1411-39. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Wealth Inequality, Wealth Constraints and Economic Performance.“ Handbook of income distribution, 1, 541-603 December 6, 1999. [with Pranab Bardhan and Herbert Gintis].
“Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences of Markets and Other Economic Institutions.” Journal of Economic Literature 36(1) (1998): 75-111.
“The Revenge of Homo Economicus: Contested Exchange and the Revival of Political Economy.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7(1) (1993): 83-102. [with Herbert Gintis]
“A Political and Economic Case for the Democratic Enterprise.” Economics and Philosophy 9(1) (1993): 75-100. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Is Income Security Possible in a Capitalist Economy?: An Agency Theoretic Analysis of an Unconditional Income Grant.” European Journal of Political Economy 8(4) (1992): 557-578.
“Power and Wealth in a Competitive Capitalist Economy.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 21(4) (1992): 324-353. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Business Ascendancy and Economic Impasse: A Structural Retrospective on Conservative Economics, 1979-1987.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(1) (1989): 107-134. [with David M. Gordon, Thomas E. Weisskopf]
“Contested Exchange: Political Economy and Modern Economic Theory.” American Economic Review 78(2) (1988): 145-150. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Labor Discipline and Aggregate Demand: A Macroeconomic Model.” American Economic Review 78(2) (1988): 395-400. [with Robert Boyer]
“Employment Rents and the Incidence of Strikes.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 69(4) (1987): 584-592. [with Juliet B. Schor]
“The Production Process in a Competitive Economy: Reply.” The American Economic Review 76(5) (1986): 1203-1204.
“The Production Process in a Competitive Economy: Walrasian, Non-Hobbesian, and Marxian Models.” American Economic Review 75(1) (1985): 16-36.
“Hearts and Minds: A Social Model of U.S. Productivity Growth.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1983(2) (1983): 381-441. [with Thomas E. Weisskopf, David M. Gordon]
“The Welfare State and Long-Term Economic Growth: Marxian, Neoclassical, and Keynesian Approaches.” The American Economic Review 72(2) (1982): 341-345. [with Herbert Gintis]
“Technical Change and the Profit Rate: A Simple Proof of the Okishio Theorem.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 5(2) (1981): 183-186.
“Capitalist Development and Educational Structure.” World Development 6(6) (1978): 783-796.
“Class Power and Alienated Labor.” Monthly Review 26(10) (1975): 9-25. [with Herbert Gintis]
“The Problem with Human Capital Theory: A Marxian Critique.” The American Economic Review 65(2) (1975): 74-82.
“The ‘Inheritance of IQ’ and the Intergenerational Reproduction of Economic Inequality.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 56(1) (1974): 39-51.
“Schooling and Inequality from Generation to Generation.” Journal of Political Economy 83(3) (1972): S219-S251.
“Migration as Investment: Empirical Tests of the Human Investment Approach to Geographical Mobility.” Review of Economics and Statistics 52(4) (1970): 356-362.
“Aggregation of Labor Inputs in the Economics of Growth and Planning: Experiments with a Two-Level CES Function.” Journal of Political Economy 78(1) (1970): 68-81.
“The Determinants of Scholastic Achievement: An Appraisal of Some Recent Evidence.” Journal of Human Resource 3(1) (1968): 3-24.
“The Efficient Allocation of Resources in Education.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 81(2) (1967): 189-219.