"Buy local" arrangements encourage members of a community or group to patronize one another instead of the external economy. They range from formal mechanisms such as local currencies to informal "I'll buy from you if you buy from me" arrangements and are often championed on social or...

This paper surveys recent work on the evolutionary origins of preferences. We are especially interested in the circumstances under which evolution would push preferences away from the self-interested perfectly-rational expected utility maximization of classical economic theory in order to...

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments to consumption levels independent of the state. For example, it is cheaper to produce housing services via owner-occupied than rented housing, but the transactions costs associated with the...