PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It took an evolutionary leap in the human species to help trigger the change from centuries of economic stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth, according to the first theory that integrates evolutionary biology and economics.
“Until now, economic growth theory did not have implications for evolutionary biology, and evolutionary biology did not have implications for economic growth,” said lead theorist Oded Galor, professor of economics at Brown University.
This new theory, the first of its kind ever proposed in the economics literature, appears as the lead article in the current Quarterly Journal of Economics. It is co-authored by Omer Moav of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“The struggle for survival that had characterized most of human existence stimulated a process of natural selection and generated an evolutionary advantage to human traits that were complementary to the growth process, triggering the takeoff from an epoch of stagnation to sustained economic growth,” the authors wrote in their study. Full: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2002-03/02-040.html --- Sent from UnionMail Service [http://mail.union.org.za]