Well, that should get us a few Google hits. Seems some behavioural economists at Yale have been studying monkey behaviour, with.... interesting results (Hat Tip: reader Tom Holsinger). Welcome to monkey freakonomics:
"Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)"
That wasn't all, either. Chen has introduced concepts like price shocks, budgeting, even gambling/investment - and so far, the monkeys are reacting pretty much as humans do in real life. Including theft and one bank heist.
These co-operation dynamics were also interesting:
"The tamarins were fairly cooperative but still showed a healthy amount of self-interest: over repeated encounters with fellow monkeys, the typical tamarin pulled the lever about 40 percent of the time. Then Hauser and Chen heightened the drama. They conditioned one tamarin to always pull the lever (thus creating an altruistic stooge) and another to never pull the lever (thus creating a selfish jerk). The stooge and the jerk were then sent to play the game with the other tamarins. The stooge blithely pulled her lever over and over, never failing to dump a marshmallow into the other monkey's cage. Initially, the other monkeys responded in kind, pulling their own levers 50 percent of the time. But once they figured out that their partner was a pushover (like a parent who buys her kid a toy on every outing whether the kid is a saint or a devil), their rate of reciprocation dropped to 30 percent -- lower than the original average rate. The selfish jerk, meanwhile, was punished even worse. Once her reputation was established, whenever she was led into the experimenting chamber, the other tamarins "would just go nuts," Chen recalls. "They'd throw their feces at the wall, walk into the corner and sit on their hands, kind of sulk."
So... chimpanzees rape and murder, and capuchins steal, exploit the gullible, and trade money for sex.
Anyone out there still up for all that "noble savage" b.s.?
This is simply WTF??????????????????
Yes, exactly.
Tom, Tom, Tom ... tsk tsk tsk.
Keith Chen may be a Yale economist but the study he is conducting at the moment is not one related to economy as much as it is one related to behavior.
Tell that to economists and be prepared for an education. Here is the classical definition of economics rendered by British economist Lionel Robbins. "Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses."
Hmm - makes one wonder exactly how prostitution was eliminated.
The article suggests that the lesson's of money and economy are not related in the sense that the money is not a scarcity nor does it document any incentives to attain it let alone use it for resources with alternative uses. IE - Milk can be used to make bread, cake, butter, ice cream, etc. or used in it's native state. Economics suggests there is a finite amount of milk and competition for the resource. How the milk is distributed for use is an example of economics at work.
USMC... the monkeys could have used the tokens for food. The number was limited. One decided to forgo some food in exchange for a quickie. Another decided to offer a quickie in exchange for a token that would buy some food.
Hence "Behavioural Economist." Looks pretty good to me. Seems to work for the guy's department, too.
As for your question near the end, I suspect he took steps to remove the tokens from circulation outside of experiment time.
If so, now it really gets interesting... are the monkeys smart enough to take the next steps - and recognize certain items around the cage as acceptable future promissory substitutes for tokens? If they do that, you've gotta admit it's economics.
Dunno, because capuchins aren't the brightest bulbs; and there may not be much to work with in those cages. If it was chimpanzees or maybe orangs, though, I'd be giving it good odds...
I'm not sure what your experience in monkey sex is, anyway, since you're assuming the only reason the female went for the quickie was the token? Assumes a lot of incompetence on the part of the male capuchin, imh(female)o.
I reckon it's really true that "Money is the root of all evil.".
Actually, the biblical phrase is "the love of money is the root of all evil".
Or in this case, the money of love.