Maybe the Monkey Kingdom needs a Federal Reserve
The researchers first trained chimpanzees in the basic rules of trade: you give to me, I give to you. They used apple slices, which chimps generally like, and grapes, which chimps really like -- think Winnie the Pooh and honey. The chimpanzees picked up the concept quickly, perhaps because they're accustomed to trading grooming services rather than physical commodities. However, the chimps were still deeply reluctant to engage in exchange unless they could get something for nothing, which in chimp terms amounted to grapes for carrots. ... Why not? Because chimps live in a society that can't enforce deals or punish cheating, surmised the researchers. It's a different story when it comes to services, such as picking ticks out of each others' hair -- but that sort of exchange doesn't lend itself to developing the specialized economic productivity that's given humans NAFTA, American Idol and the leisure to swap fruit with primates.
I'm not sure I entirely follow this but it seems like the researchers were looking for the wrong thing. It is not trading something for nothing to give up something you don't want for something you do want. It is simply a matter of preference, and trade always involves the exchange less desirable things for more desirable things, its only that the subjective evaluation is different in the case of the two parties to the exchange. Also barter seems to be used in a strange way here: it doesn't mean exchanging items of the same value; it means only exchange in absence of money, that is, a good we acquire not to consume but to trade again.
Maybe someone can read the full study and gain more insight.
Comments (8)
javier
it doesn't seem like they tried to find the chimps subjective valuation of the grape in terms of apples or anything. From my reading it just seemed like the chimp wouldn't trade a grape for an apple or carrot. but would the chimp have traded the grape for a basketfull of apples. that would have shown me a lot about chimps.
Published: January 31, 2008 12:38 PM
javier
it doesn't seem like they tried to find the chimps subjective valuation of the grape in terms of apples or anything. From my reading it just seemed like the chimp wouldn't trade a grape for an apple or carrot. but would the chimp have traded the grape for a basketfull of apples. that would have shown me a lot about chimps.
Published: January 31, 2008 12:38 PM
Yancey Ward
Jeffrey Tucker,
I couldn't find the paper mentioned in the Wired article, so I can't be sure what they were doing, however one possible interpretation might be that chimps lack the ability to make finely tuned exchanges between two different items. For example, the chimps really, really like grapes, but only like apples, so chimps would be willing to trade apple for grapes but not vice versa, and they are unable to tune the trade to overcome this by, let us say, exchanging two slices of apple for one grape or some other factor of modification.
The author of the paper has other papers listed on her website that study primates economic behavior that you might find of interest.
Published: January 31, 2008 12:40 PM
jeffrey
A correspondent writes as follows:
There's a link to the full article at the bottom of the Wired summary, but here it is as well.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001518
They did establish an order of preference for the various foods, but they only offered one for one trades, so there' wasn't a mechanism for the chimps to trade 2 apple slices for a grape, for example.
They observed a statistically significant reluctance for chimps to engage in trades for small profits (as determined by the % of time chimps that chose grapes over apples) and posit two theories to account for that. One is that the chimps are responding rationally to a "risk of defection", i.e. the other party walks off with his food and yours too, in a society without sufficient cultural norms to punish such behavior. The other theory is complimentary, that the absence of property right for items not in your physical possession inhibits the rise of trade
"First, the risk of defection discourages costly commodity barter. When a chimpanzee hands another individual a barter commodity, the second individual (let's say “the seller”) could defect and run away with both commodities. To the buyer, the expected cost of defection will be smaller the lower the value of the commodity that the buyer must hand over and the greater the reputation for cooperation possessed by the seller. The expected benefit from the barter to the buyer will be equal to the buyer's subjective difference in valuation between the commodity to be received and the sacrificed commodity (the “consumer's surplus”). This theory thus predicts that chimpanzee barter should take place more often when (1) the value of the sacrificed commodity is lower; (2) the seller's reputation for cooperation is higher; and (3) the “consumer's surplus” to the buyer is higher (as when a large difference in value exists between what the buyer has to give up relative to the promised commodity). Our experiments provide evidence in support of factors (1) and (3), as well as factor (2), because, as was clear to the chimpanzees, our human experimenters never defected.
A second, compatible, theory is that commodity barter probably cannot develop in the absence of ownership norms. Such norms allow individuals to lay down valuable commodities and store them for future barter or consumption; finding a barter partner while one is carrying a commodity would be a very rare occurrence. Chimpanzees do maintain possession norms (a kind of property norm) that protect commodities that they physically control, but an individual cannot specialize in production, or engage in large-scale barter, if the individual must hold its inventory in its hands. Property possession norms are less costly to enforce than property ownership norms because it is easier for an enforcer to witness and to correct a forcible dispossession than to decide which among competing claimants “owns” a commodity that one of them has set down. This property rights theory leads to the prediction that chimpanzee subjects should become more willing to barter when they possess increasingly secure hoards of commodities. Note that this theory is not counter to documented reciprocity in chimpanzees, because these interactions typically involve services, such as grooming or support, which do not require ownership norms, or even possession norms, to protect them. Thus, we expect exchange of services to emerge prior to exchange of commodities.
It is possible that both of the theories will prove to have explanatory value in future experiments on primate barter, and perhaps on human behavior as well, as humans, too, do not always maximize their gains in trade, especially when transaction costs are high. Further investigation of these theories could shed light on why chimpanzees do not engage in costly commodity barter and how this important form of cooperation became common among humans."
Published: January 31, 2008 2:47 PM
Matthew Lee
Have they reached the level of making two for two trades, or have they been placed in situations which would seem to make one fruit/item for availible?
Perhaps they should study grooming patterns in chimps, that would be some fun analysis.
Published: January 31, 2008 9:11 PM
Person 2
In a similar story, they trained monkeys to use a token money, exchanged for fruits and treats. A male monkey actually got a female to perform prostitution for the equivalent of one grape. I'm not making this up!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05FREAK.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5089&en=6bcb661222c32ba6&ex=1275624000
Published: February 1, 2008 2:52 AM
Matthew Lee
Before you know it, one monkey will monopolize force, then declare that prostitution is illegal, and these monkeys will be banished from the community, but who knows?
Published: February 1, 2008 12:05 PM
Bastiat
So, monkeys understand the risks of trading with people that don't understand economics. That's pretty smart...
Published: February 2, 2008 10:46 PM