New study finds similarities between monkey business and human business

Little attention has been paid to whether systematic economic biases such as risk-aversion are learned behaviors – and thus easily ameliorated through market incentives – or biologically based, arising in novel situations and in spite of experience. In a groundbreaking new study from the Journal of Political Economy, Yale researchers extend this question across species, exploring how a colony of capuchin monkeys responds to economic decisions. They found that monkeys doing business – including trading and gambling – behave in ways that closely mirror our own behavioral inclinations.