For a number of years I have been conducting research on how evolutionary forces may shape human preferences, a question that has led me to get inspiration from biological and anthropological research, and to collaborate with biologists and anthropologists, especially within the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) where I was the Director of the Biology program from 2012 to 2018 (when we decided to drop the mono-disciplinary programs).
A number of economics & biology events take place in Toulouse every year.
The Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop
This is a yearly two-day event. Please check here for information on upcoming workshops and other similar events organized by Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse.
Tenth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2023): Inertia (link)
Ninth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2022): Production and Sharing (link)
Eighth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2021): Fertility: Causes and Consequences (program)
Seventh Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2019): Cultural Evolution (program)
Sixth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2018): Evolution, Cognition, and Rationality (program)
Fifth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2017): The Evolution & Economics of the Family (program)
Fourth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2016): Evolution: Transmission Mechanisms and Population Structure (program)
Third Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2015): Evolution and Morality (program)
Second Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2014): no theme (program)
First Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2013): no theme (program)
Seminars
The economics & biology seminar ran from March 2012 until June 2016, when it was decided that all the IAST seminar series would be merged into one single series (see here for information on upcoming IAST seminars).
May 13, 2016
Adam Powell (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)
Human Demography History, Paleogenetics, and Cultural Complexity
April 8, 2016
Troy Day (Queen's University)
Rethinking our Approach to Managing the Evolution of Drug Resistance
April 1, 2016
Robin Aguilée (EDB)
Some Predictions on the Responses of Plants to Climate Change
March 18, 2016
Jean-Pierre Amigues (TSE)
The Orangutan Dilemma
March 11, 2016
Alan Kirman (GREQAM and EHESS)
Counterintuitive Learning: an Exploratory Experiment
March 4, 2016
Jörgen Weibull (Stockholm School of Economics and IAST)
Does Evolution Lead to Maximizing Behavior?
December 11, 2015
Michèle Tertilt (University of Mannheim)
Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development?
December 4, 2015
Emmanuel Todd (INED (Institut national d'études démographiques))
Les sociétés veulent-elles vraiment savoir la vérité sur elles-mêmes?
November 6, 2015
Ruth Mace (University College London)
Social organization and cooperation: a real world study in ethnic groups in southwestern China
September 25, 2015
Svante Pääbo (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
Patterns of Genetic Variation in Present-day Humans
September 18, 2015
Rebecca Sear (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Beyond the nuclear family: an evolutionary perspective on family organisation
May 29, 2015
Yann Bramoullé (GREQAM Marseille)
Altruism in networks
May 22, 2015
Gabriella Conti (University College London)
Early life adversity and lifelong health: lessons from rhesus monkeys
April 10, 2015
Thomas Buser (University of Amsterdam)
Can stress explain individual differences in willingness to compete?
March 13, 2015
David Kleijn (Wageningen University)
Evidence-based biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services
March 13, 2015
Hanna Kokko (Zürich)
Why individually optimal behaviour does not create best performing populations: examples from migration and dispersal
February 27, 2015
Michel Raymond (Montpellier)
Darwinian puzzles in humans
December 5, 2014
Sarah Smith (Bristol)
Just Giving? Giving in social groups
November 7, 2014
Michael Jennions (Australian National University)
When does it pay to be sexy? And why would you seasonally change the ratio of sons to daughters you produce?
October 17, 2014
Markus Herrmann (Laval)
Antibiotic effectiveness: new challenges in natural resource management
September 26, 2014
Frans de Waal (Emory)
First- and second-order sense of fairness in primates
September 19, 2014
John McNamara (Bristol)
Towards a richer evolutionary game theory
June 13, 2014
Balazs Szentes (London School of Economics)
On the biological foundation of risk preferences
May 27, 2014
Nippe Lagerlöf (York University)
Time Since What? (Re)interpreting the Neolithic Transition in a Malthusian Environment
May 16, 2014
Cédric Sueur (CNRS Strasbourg)
Social networks as a trade-off between efficient information transmission and reduced disease transmission
April 4, 2014
Redouan Bshary (Neuchatel)
Game theory applied to marine cleaning mutualism: a success story with some limitations
March 28, 2014
Flavio Toxvaerd (Cambridge)
The Optimal Control of Infectious Diseases via Prevention and Treatment
March 21, 2014
Sam Bowles (Santa Fe Institute)
Cosmopolitan ancestors: Genetic evidence that prehistoric populations were not small and isolated
December 6, 2013
Alan Grafen (Oxford)
Defining fitness in an uncertain world
November 22, 2013
Tim Clutton-Brock (Cambridge)
The origins of cooperation
November 8, 2013
Susanne Foitzik (Gutenberg Universitat)
Colony personalities and the importance of behavioral variance for insect societies
October 18, 2013
Manfred Milinski (Max Planck Institute)
Cooperation in the climate change game
October 4, 2013
Minus van Baalen (Ecologie & Evolution)
Biological information: Why we need a good measure and the challenges ahead
September 20, 2013
Rob Boyd (Arizona State)
Hunter gatherer population structure and the evolution of contingent cooperation
May 31, 2013
Don Cox (Boston College) Intergenerational transfers and the great recession
Philipp Heeb (EDB) The role of signaling and the social networks in parental allocation decisions
April 12, 2013
Laurent Lehmann (Lausanne) The evolution of long-lasting behaviors and social discount rates in spatially structured populations
March 22, 2013
Charles Efferson (Zürich) Intergroup conflict and reciprocity are mutually reinforcing: an empirical study of the ultimate origins of human altruism
February 1, 2013
Arthur Robson (Simon Fraser) Biology and the arguments of utility
December 14, 2012
Laura Fortunato (Santa Fe) The evolution of the human family
December 7, 2012
Tom Sherratt (Carleton) The evolution of superstition and other curious behaviours
November 23, 2012
Sergey Gavrilets (Tennessee) On the evolutionary origins of the egalitarian syndrome
November 9, 2012
Aviad Heifetz (Open University Israel) Well-being demonetized: complementary perspectives from psychoanalytic theory
October 26, 2012
Michel Loreau (SEEM) From populations to ecosystems: towards a unifying ecological theory
October 12, 2012
Nick Netzer (Zürich) Probability weighting as evolutionary second-best
September 28, 2012
Michael Hochberg (Montpellier) Conflict, cooperation and functional specialization in groups
June 8, 2012
Éric Tabacchi (Ecolab) Biological Invasions: when Human Sciences matter within an Ecological Process
Ingela Alger (TSE and IAST) Homo moralis: preference evolution under incomplete information and assortative matching
June 1, 2012
Gilles Saint-Paul (TSE) Occupational choice and the mating market
May 11, 2012
Jean Clobert (SEEM) Dispersion, density and information
Adrien Blanchet (TSE) Urban equilibria and optimal transport
May 4, 2012
Tom Revilla (SEEM) Evolutionary ecology of seed dispersal by frugivores
March 30, 2012
Étienne Danchin (EDB) Non-genetic inheritance
March 23, 2012
Alexis Chaine (SEEM) Variable Selection in a variable world: the evolution of social signals and diversity
Paul Seabright (TSE) The significance of sexual selection for economic outcomes: current work in progress
March 16, 2012
Andy Russell (SEEM) Leadership: what is it and do we need new theory to understand it ?
Pierre Dubois (TSE) Nutrition and risk sharing within the household
La Journée DiPEE
This is a yearly one-day workshop to foster exchange between researchers from seven research departments in different disciplines in Toulouse. DiPEE stands for Dispositif de Partenariat en Écologie et Environnement, and is sponsored by CNRS.
Here are the programs of the DiPEE workshops that I have helped co-organized:
2016
2015
2014
2013
A number of economics & biology events take place in Toulouse every year.
The Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop
This is a yearly two-day event. Please check here for information on upcoming workshops and other similar events organized by Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse.
Tenth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2023): Inertia (link)
Ninth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2022): Production and Sharing (link)
Eighth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2021): Fertility: Causes and Consequences (program)
Seventh Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2019): Cultural Evolution (program)
Sixth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2018): Evolution, Cognition, and Rationality (program)
Fifth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2017): The Evolution & Economics of the Family (program)
Fourth Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2016): Evolution: Transmission Mechanisms and Population Structure (program)
Third Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2015): Evolution and Morality (program)
Second Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2014): no theme (program)
First Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop (2013): no theme (program)
Seminars
The economics & biology seminar ran from March 2012 until June 2016, when it was decided that all the IAST seminar series would be merged into one single series (see here for information on upcoming IAST seminars).
May 13, 2016
Adam Powell (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)
Human Demography History, Paleogenetics, and Cultural Complexity
April 8, 2016
Troy Day (Queen's University)
Rethinking our Approach to Managing the Evolution of Drug Resistance
April 1, 2016
Robin Aguilée (EDB)
Some Predictions on the Responses of Plants to Climate Change
March 18, 2016
Jean-Pierre Amigues (TSE)
The Orangutan Dilemma
March 11, 2016
Alan Kirman (GREQAM and EHESS)
Counterintuitive Learning: an Exploratory Experiment
March 4, 2016
Jörgen Weibull (Stockholm School of Economics and IAST)
Does Evolution Lead to Maximizing Behavior?
December 11, 2015
Michèle Tertilt (University of Mannheim)
Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development?
December 4, 2015
Emmanuel Todd (INED (Institut national d'études démographiques))
Les sociétés veulent-elles vraiment savoir la vérité sur elles-mêmes?
November 6, 2015
Ruth Mace (University College London)
Social organization and cooperation: a real world study in ethnic groups in southwestern China
September 25, 2015
Svante Pääbo (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
Patterns of Genetic Variation in Present-day Humans
September 18, 2015
Rebecca Sear (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Beyond the nuclear family: an evolutionary perspective on family organisation
May 29, 2015
Yann Bramoullé (GREQAM Marseille)
Altruism in networks
May 22, 2015
Gabriella Conti (University College London)
Early life adversity and lifelong health: lessons from rhesus monkeys
April 10, 2015
Thomas Buser (University of Amsterdam)
Can stress explain individual differences in willingness to compete?
March 13, 2015
David Kleijn (Wageningen University)
Evidence-based biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services
March 13, 2015
Hanna Kokko (Zürich)
Why individually optimal behaviour does not create best performing populations: examples from migration and dispersal
February 27, 2015
Michel Raymond (Montpellier)
Darwinian puzzles in humans
December 5, 2014
Sarah Smith (Bristol)
Just Giving? Giving in social groups
November 7, 2014
Michael Jennions (Australian National University)
When does it pay to be sexy? And why would you seasonally change the ratio of sons to daughters you produce?
October 17, 2014
Markus Herrmann (Laval)
Antibiotic effectiveness: new challenges in natural resource management
September 26, 2014
Frans de Waal (Emory)
First- and second-order sense of fairness in primates
September 19, 2014
John McNamara (Bristol)
Towards a richer evolutionary game theory
June 13, 2014
Balazs Szentes (London School of Economics)
On the biological foundation of risk preferences
May 27, 2014
Nippe Lagerlöf (York University)
Time Since What? (Re)interpreting the Neolithic Transition in a Malthusian Environment
May 16, 2014
Cédric Sueur (CNRS Strasbourg)
Social networks as a trade-off between efficient information transmission and reduced disease transmission
April 4, 2014
Redouan Bshary (Neuchatel)
Game theory applied to marine cleaning mutualism: a success story with some limitations
March 28, 2014
Flavio Toxvaerd (Cambridge)
The Optimal Control of Infectious Diseases via Prevention and Treatment
March 21, 2014
Sam Bowles (Santa Fe Institute)
Cosmopolitan ancestors: Genetic evidence that prehistoric populations were not small and isolated
December 6, 2013
Alan Grafen (Oxford)
Defining fitness in an uncertain world
November 22, 2013
Tim Clutton-Brock (Cambridge)
The origins of cooperation
November 8, 2013
Susanne Foitzik (Gutenberg Universitat)
Colony personalities and the importance of behavioral variance for insect societies
October 18, 2013
Manfred Milinski (Max Planck Institute)
Cooperation in the climate change game
October 4, 2013
Minus van Baalen (Ecologie & Evolution)
Biological information: Why we need a good measure and the challenges ahead
September 20, 2013
Rob Boyd (Arizona State)
Hunter gatherer population structure and the evolution of contingent cooperation
May 31, 2013
Don Cox (Boston College) Intergenerational transfers and the great recession
Philipp Heeb (EDB) The role of signaling and the social networks in parental allocation decisions
April 12, 2013
Laurent Lehmann (Lausanne) The evolution of long-lasting behaviors and social discount rates in spatially structured populations
March 22, 2013
Charles Efferson (Zürich) Intergroup conflict and reciprocity are mutually reinforcing: an empirical study of the ultimate origins of human altruism
February 1, 2013
Arthur Robson (Simon Fraser) Biology and the arguments of utility
December 14, 2012
Laura Fortunato (Santa Fe) The evolution of the human family
December 7, 2012
Tom Sherratt (Carleton) The evolution of superstition and other curious behaviours
November 23, 2012
Sergey Gavrilets (Tennessee) On the evolutionary origins of the egalitarian syndrome
November 9, 2012
Aviad Heifetz (Open University Israel) Well-being demonetized: complementary perspectives from psychoanalytic theory
October 26, 2012
Michel Loreau (SEEM) From populations to ecosystems: towards a unifying ecological theory
October 12, 2012
Nick Netzer (Zürich) Probability weighting as evolutionary second-best
September 28, 2012
Michael Hochberg (Montpellier) Conflict, cooperation and functional specialization in groups
June 8, 2012
Éric Tabacchi (Ecolab) Biological Invasions: when Human Sciences matter within an Ecological Process
Ingela Alger (TSE and IAST) Homo moralis: preference evolution under incomplete information and assortative matching
June 1, 2012
Gilles Saint-Paul (TSE) Occupational choice and the mating market
May 11, 2012
Jean Clobert (SEEM) Dispersion, density and information
Adrien Blanchet (TSE) Urban equilibria and optimal transport
May 4, 2012
Tom Revilla (SEEM) Evolutionary ecology of seed dispersal by frugivores
March 30, 2012
Étienne Danchin (EDB) Non-genetic inheritance
March 23, 2012
Alexis Chaine (SEEM) Variable Selection in a variable world: the evolution of social signals and diversity
Paul Seabright (TSE) The significance of sexual selection for economic outcomes: current work in progress
March 16, 2012
Andy Russell (SEEM) Leadership: what is it and do we need new theory to understand it ?
Pierre Dubois (TSE) Nutrition and risk sharing within the household
La Journée DiPEE
This is a yearly one-day workshop to foster exchange between researchers from seven research departments in different disciplines in Toulouse. DiPEE stands for Dispositif de Partenariat en Écologie et Environnement, and is sponsored by CNRS.
Here are the programs of the DiPEE workshops that I have helped co-organized:
2016
2015
2014
2013
