Economic institutions as ecological niches
- 1 February 2000
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Vol. 23 (1) , 148-149
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00252412
Abstract
Economic institutions governing such activities as food sharing among non-kin, the accumulation and inheritance of wealth, and the division of labor and its rewards are human-constructed environments capable of imparting distinctive direction and pace to the process of biological evolution and cultural change. Where differing structures of these institutions take the form of distinct conventions sustained by (near) mutual adherence, small initial differences may support divergent evolutionary trajectories even in the absence of conformist behaviors.Keywords
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: