In my previous blog I speculated that the Danes use ritualistic feasting as a way of creating a shared sense of belonging, which is an important basis for social cooperation and trust. Last week I was able to make more detailed observations on one such collective ritual. During the pe

Readers who have been following this blog for a while know that in addition to being a professor at the University of Connecticut, I wear a second hat as the Vice-President of the Evolution Institute (EI). The chief goal of the Evolution Institute is to connect the evolutionary scienc

The original text of the opinion piece on intraelite competition that I sent to Bloomberg Opinion grew to almost twice the length when it was finally published. The two editors kept asking me to expand on some points and to provide supplementary evidence on others. Not all of this end

Today Bloomberg.com published my opinion piece in which I analyze the connection between economic inequality and political instability. It starts: Complex human societies, including our own, are fragile. They are held together by an invisible web of mutual trust and social cooperation

One of the most important ideas that I am trying to inject into the debate about the consequences of growing inequality on American society is ‘elite overproduction’. I use the sociological definition of elites: it’s the small proportion of the population (typically 1-2 pe

In my previous blog on War Before Civilization I used the paintings by a French artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Although there was some controversy on the authenticity of his depictions of life in Southeastern North America in sixteenth century, I believe that at this point the ve

(Continued from Part I) I had to get a temporary account in a Danish bank, anyway, so I decided to wait with paying the bill until I had it. Two weeks later I had the requisites and I went back to the nearest Danske Bank (DB) branch to get an account. I filled the form and was assured

I am in Oslo, attending an Evolution Institute-organized workshop led by my EI colleagues Jerry Lieberman and David Sloan Wilson. We are in Norway because this country is well known for a very high quality of life. In fact, during the last decade Norway has reliably occupied the numbe

Over the last two weeks I did not have any time left for blogging. First, I have moved from Connecticut to Aarhus, where I will be for the next several months. Or, at least, this is where I will be based – I already have a lot of trips planned, all over Europe. Second, I have already

The previous blog in this series showed that a simple three-factorial model can reproduce very faithfully the long-term dynamics of real wages. The model not only explains why the real wages stopped growing in the late 1970s, but also (surprisingly) the ups and downs since 1980. Furth