The decline of evolutionary game theory in economics and its insights for theoretical evolutionary biology
This discussion is by no means in the final version, and is actually just a begin. It will be updated occasionally.
As a researcher in theoretical evolutionary biology, when I chatted with microeconomics during a lunch, the only shared topic that we could easily come up with is the "evolutionary game theory" (EGT), which was originally proposed by evolutionary biologist Maynard Smith and later got great interest among economists. However, microeconomists' attitude towards EGT seems somewhat contemptuous, and their comments on this method indicate that it is already a dead field in theoretical microeconomics. This is in contrast with its long-lasting popularity in theoretical evolutionary biology. My impression of the reason why economists gradually lost interest in EGT is that one can actually "creat" and "reach" any equilibrium, because the equilibrium in EGT, which is usually called the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS), will depend on both the invading and the residential strategy, but the specification of the two strategies is arbitrary. Therefore, model based on EGT is arbitrary and thus makes not sense. However, currently, I may need to read some papers to get more details.
To be continued...
As a researcher in theoretical evolutionary biology, when I chatted with microeconomics during a lunch, the only shared topic that we could easily come up with is the "evolutionary game theory" (EGT), which was originally proposed by evolutionary biologist Maynard Smith and later got great interest among economists. However, microeconomists' attitude towards EGT seems somewhat contemptuous, and their comments on this method indicate that it is already a dead field in theoretical microeconomics. This is in contrast with its long-lasting popularity in theoretical evolutionary biology. My impression of the reason why economists gradually lost interest in EGT is that one can actually "creat" and "reach" any equilibrium, because the equilibrium in EGT, which is usually called the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS), will depend on both the invading and the residential strategy, but the specification of the two strategies is arbitrary. Therefore, model based on EGT is arbitrary and thus makes not sense. However, currently, I may need to read some papers to get more details.
To be continued...