Ken Binmore: Behavioral Scientist

This paper discusses Ken Binmore’s contribution to the debate on other-regarding preferences with reference to his contributions on equilibrium selection in non-cooperative games. We first assess his claim that the experimental evidence in favor of different types of social preferences has been vastly exaggerated. Then, we compare Binmore’s contribution with some recent developments of the literature. We show that recent experimental evidence lends support to his view that subjects’ behavior is mostly driven by a combination of learning and selfishness. From a theoretical point of view, we show that Binmore’s positions foreshadowed what is today known as the Social Heuristic Hypothesis.