L'economia dei primitivi

This article aims to interpret the debate on the behaviour of the first human communities, in particular their big game and food sharing practices, through a simple model where the big game preys are characterised as public goods. Anthropologists and economists alike have discussed the issue from two opposite points of view. The first assumes essentially self-interested preferences and interprets cooperation for hunting big preys as in terms of choices under uncertainty. The second one considers non self-interested attitudes such as inequality aversion or strong reciprocity. Using the former interpretation, it can be shown that mutual cooperation is unanimously preferred only under restrictive assumptions on payoffs. Using the latter two Nash equilibria can exist. Moreover, if strong reciprocity is assumed, the full cooperation equilibrium is evolutionary stable. This possibility is strengthened if strong reciprocity is characterised by transfers to the cooperators of the sanction assigned to the free riders.