Economic institutions as ecological niches

Economic institutions governing such activities as food sharing among non-k in, the accumulation and inheritance of wealth, and the division of labor a nd its rewards are human-constructed environments capable of imparting dist inctive direction and pace to the process of biological evolution and cultu ral change. Where differing structures of these institutions take the form of distinct conventions sustained by (near) mutual adherence, small initial differences may support divergent evolutionary trajectories even in the ab sence of conformist behaviors.