Essays on Political Economy

77 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004.Chapter Three explores how the economic environment may shape individual preferences, which are typically taken as exogenous when modeling individual behavior. Despite the fact that agents can trade at comparative prices, agents modify their preferences so that they favor the good that they are better at producing. This equilibrium is stable and unique subject to certain assumptions. Furthermore, in equilibrium, heterogenous preferences may coexist, as opposed to the monomorphic population assumption in the ESS (Evolutionarily Stable Strategy) concept.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD