Why does an altruistically inclined player behave altruistically in some contexts and egoistically or spitefully in others? This article provides an economic explanation to this question. The basic argument is centered on the idea that social norms shape our preferences through a process of...

We model how individual preferences are shaped by strategic reciprocity choices. Our model accounts for heterogeneous players — with intrinsic altruistic, selfish or spiteful preferences — who randomly engage in short-run, as well as long-run, pair- wise interactions. To disentangle the...

This essay provides an approach to the analysis of the link between Thorstein Veblen's evolutionary approach and evolutionary game theory (EGT). We shed some light on the potential contribution of Veblen's theory of socioeconomic evolution to the discussion on the application of EGT to social...