Publié le 24 mars 2025
–
Mis à jour le 16 avril 2025
Date(s)
le 17 avril 2025
Lieu(x)
Laboratoire GREDEG
Salle PICASSO
14h-15h30
Salle PICASSO
14h-15h30
GREDEG
Zoom Link to follow the conference live
Flaminio Squazzoni is Professor of Sociology and Director of the BehaveLab at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy. He is editor of JASSS-Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal for research in agent-based modelling, and past president of ESSA-European Social Simulation Association (2012-2016). His research focuses on social behaviour, with a particular interest in cooperation, social norms and social networks.
Title: The Devil’s Dung? Money as a mechanism of generalized reciprocity
Abstract:
St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226) famously called money the devil’s dung, and indeed money is often associated with greed, inequality, and corruption. Drawing on Nowak’s five rules for the evolution of cooperation, we argue here that money encodes the principle of generalized reciprocity that is fundamental to social evolution. Our results show that money exchange is an evolutionarily stable strategy that promotes cooperation without relying on the cognitive demands of direct reciprocity or reputation mechanisms. However, we also find that excessive liquidity can be detrimental because it can distort the informational value of money as a signal of past cooperation, making defection more profitable. This suggests that, in addition to its trust-building and punishment functions, the emergence of institutions that regulate the money supply was key to maintaining generalized reciprocity within and across groups.
More about Flaminio Squazzoni
Flaminio Squazzoni is Professor of Sociology and Director of the BehaveLab at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy. He is editor of JASSS-Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal for research in agent-based modelling, and past president of ESSA-European Social Simulation Association (2012-2016). His research focuses on social behaviour, with a particular interest in cooperation, social norms and social networks.
Title: The Devil’s Dung? Money as a mechanism of generalized reciprocity
Abstract:
St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226) famously called money the devil’s dung, and indeed money is often associated with greed, inequality, and corruption. Drawing on Nowak’s five rules for the evolution of cooperation, we argue here that money encodes the principle of generalized reciprocity that is fundamental to social evolution. Our results show that money exchange is an evolutionarily stable strategy that promotes cooperation without relying on the cognitive demands of direct reciprocity or reputation mechanisms. However, we also find that excessive liquidity can be detrimental because it can distort the informational value of money as a signal of past cooperation, making defection more profitable. This suggests that, in addition to its trust-building and punishment functions, the emergence of institutions that regulate the money supply was key to maintaining generalized reciprocity within and across groups.
More about Flaminio Squazzoni
