On the evolution of attitudes towards risk in winner-take-all games

A long-standing conjecture is that winner-take-all games such as patent rac es lead to the survival of risk-takers and the extinction of risk-averters. In many species a winner-lake-ail game determines the males' right to repr oduce, and the same argument suggests that males will evolve to he risk-tak ers. Psychological and sociological evidence buttresses the argument that m ales are more risk-taking than females. Using an evolutionary model of pref erence-formation, we investigate to what extent evolution leads to risk-tak ing in winner-take-ail environments. Journal of Economic Literature Classif ication Numbers: C7, D8. (C) 1999 Academic Press.