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Economic reasoning in non-human animals
A handful of comparative psychologists at American universities have attempted to demonstrate economic reasoning in non-human animals. Early attempts along these lines focus on the behavior of rats and pigeons. These studies draw on the tenets of behavioral psychology, where the main goal is to discover analogs to human behavior in experimentally-tractable non-human animals. They are also methodologically similar to the work of Ferster and Skinner. Methodological similarities aside, early researchers in non-human economics deviate from behaviorism in their terminology. Although such studies are set up primarily in an operant conditioning chamber, using food rewards for pecking/bar-pressing behavior, the researchers describe pecking and bar pressing not in terms of reinforcement and stimulus-response relationships, but instead in terms of work, demand, budget, and labor. Recent studies have adopted a slightly different approach, taking a more evolutionary perspective, comparing economic behavior of humans to a species of non-human primate, the capuchin monkey.

The animal as a human analog
Many early studies of non-human economic reasoning were performed on rats and pigeons in a operant conditioning chamber. These studies looked at things like peck rate (in the case of the pigeon) and bar pressing rate (in the case of the rat) given certain conditions of reward. Early researchers claim, for example, that response pattern (pecking/bar pressing rate) is an appropriate analog to human labor supply. Researchers in this field advocate for the appropriateness of using animal economic behavior to understand the elementary components of human economic behavior. In a paper by Battalio, Green, and Kagel (1981, p 621), they write Space considerations do not permit a detailed discussion of the reasons why economists should take seriously the investigation of economic theories using nonhuman subjects....[Studies of economic behavior in non-human animals] provide a laboratory for identifying, testing, and better understanding general laws of economic behavior. Use of this laboratory is predicated on the fact that behavior as well as structure vary continuously across species, and that principles of economic behavior would be unique among behavioral principles if they did not apply, with some variation, of course, to the behavior of nonhumans.

Labor supply
The typical laboratory environment to study labor supply in pigeons is set up as follows. Pigeons are first deprived of food. Since the animals are hungry, food becomes highly desired. The pigeons are placed in an operant conditioning chamber and through orienting and exploring the environment of the chamber they discover that by pecking a small disk located on one side of the chamber, food is delivered to them. In effect, pecking behavior becomes reinforced, as it is associated with food. Before long, the pigeon pecks at the disk (or stimulus) regularly.

In this circumstance, The pigeon is said to "work" for the food by pecking. The food, then, is thought of as the currency. The value of the currency can be adjusted in a couple of different ways, including the amount of food delivered, the rate of food delivery and the type of food delivered (Some foods are more desirable than others).

Economic behavior similar to that observed in humans is discovered when the hungry pigeons stop working/work less when the reward is reduced. Researchers argue that this is similar to labor supply behavior in humans. That is like humans (who, even in need, will only work so much for a given wage) the pigeons demonstrate decreases in pecking (work) when the reward (value) is reduced.

Demand
In human economics, a typical demand curve is negative. This means that as the price of a certain good increases, the amount that consumers are able to purchase decreases. Researchers studying demand curves in non-human animals such as rats observe that demand curves have negative slopes, consistent with the slope of human demand curves.

Researchers have studied demand in rats in a manner distinct from studying labor supply in pigeons. Specifically, say we have experimental subjects, rats, in an operant chamber and we require them to press a lever to receive a reward. The reward can be either food (reward pellets), water, or a commodity drink such as cherry cola. Unlike previous pigeon studies, where the work analog was pecking and the monetary analog was reward, in the studies on demand in rats, the monetary analog is bar pressing. Under these circumstances, the researchers claim that changing the number of bar presses required to obtain a commodity item is analogous to changing the price of a commodity item in human economics.

In effect, results of demand studies in non-human animals are that, as the bar-pressing requirement (cost) increases, the animal presses the bar the required number of times less often (payment).

Monkey trading behavior
Recent work on economic behavior in non-human animals has focused on capuchin monkeys. Here the researchers seem less inclined toward the behaviorist tradition of the laboratory animal-human behavior analog. Instead, they attempt to adopt a more evolutionary perspective, positing that economic reasoning might be basic, unlearned, and serve some adaptive function.

One recent study involves the introduction of a currency system into a colony of captive capuchin monkeys. The currency is in the form of coins and is redeemable for food and other purchasable items when exchanged with a researcher. Under these conditions, the researchers studied three features of monkey trading: demand, loss aversion, and risk aversion.

In this study, monkeys are presented with an amount of money and are shown a certain amount of food or other goods. The monkeys must take the money and hand it to the experimenter in exchange for goods. In one condition of the experiment, after the monkey has paid for the goods, it has the option to take a sure amount of food now, or wait until the experimenter alters the amount of food presented. In this circumstance, the experimenter can either increase or decrease the amount of food given. Thus, this experimental setup allows the researchers to look at the gambling behavior of the animals. The experimenters can therefore ask the following questions: Will the monkey take the sure amount of food? Will the monkey “gamble” by waiting until the experimenter changes the amount of food present? Does the decision of the animal depend on the circumstances? Results indicate that the monkeys are risk-averse: They prefer to take the initial amount of food than wait for the experimenter to change the amount presented.

The experimenters introduce several other manipulations, including changing the allocated budget, changing the cost of certain items, changing the items themselves. Specifically, the researchers found an increase in item purchase and consumption when that item decreases in value, a result consistent with those found in human economics.

Taken together, the results of this study indicate that capuchin monkeys are not only risk-averse, but are also sensitive to constructs such as price, budget, and payoff expectation. According to the researchers, the animals are not trained to behave in this way; these behaviors arise naturally in the trading environment. As a result, these researchers argue that basic economic behavior and reasoning might be unlearned, innate, and subject to natural selection.