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Reply to “Modeling the evolution of preferences: an answer to Schubert and Cordes”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

CHRISTIAN SCHUBERT*
Affiliation:
Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany
CHRISTIAN CORDES*
Affiliation:
University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
PETER J. RICHERSON*
Affiliation:
University of California at Davis, Davis, USA

Extract

In their comment “Modeling the evolution of preferences: an answer to Schubert and Cordes” (2013, this journal), Kapeller and Steinerberger claim to have identified some flaws in the formal argument developed in our paper “Role models that make you unhappy: light paternalism, social learning, and welfare” (2013, this journal). Specifically, they maintain that there is no runaway dynamic in consumption and preference values and that our model therefore always leads to a stable society. In their proof, Kapeller and Steinerberger show that their system is bounded by the highest and lowest preference and consumption levels in the population and can never escape them. Their argument does, however, not apply to the system of coupled dynamic equations we employed to model runaway consumption.

Type
Reply
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2014 

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