The Promises of a Naturalistic Approach: How Cultural Evolution Theory Can Inform (Evolutionary) Economics

Abstract

Humans are an ecologically extremely successful species. Underlying this achievement is our evolved unique adaptation for culture. Moreover, humans cultural capacity initiated a process of gene-culture coevolution that lead to a plethora of behavioral and cognitive dispositions on which cultural adaptation to challenging environments via cultural evolution rests. These characteristics of human cognition are highly relevant to any discipline dealing with human behavior. This article presents these outcomes of human phylogeny and discusses this naturalistic perspective s implications for (evolutionary) economics. Moreover, some fruitful applications of cultural evolution theory to the explanation of economic phenomena are provided.