Article
The Iron Law of Selfishness: Response to a comment by Alexander Field
Journal of Economic Perspectives
(2003)
Abstract
Alexander Field was not convinced of a result that I claimed in my JEP 2001 paper that in "haystack models" with non-assortative mating, if the number of descendants of founding group members is determined by an n-player prisoners' dilemma game, then the population will converge to a population of defectors. He thought that the result applied only if the groups were large. I respond with a more detailed discussion and show how the result works even when groups have only two members.
Keywords
- altruism,
- assortative matching,
- group selection
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring 2003
Citation Information
Ted Bergstrom. "The Iron Law of Selfishness: Response to a comment by Alexander Field" Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol. 96 Iss. 1 (2003) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ted_bergstrom/42/