"If anybody knows a study of a problem (preferably real world) where GAs are shown to outperform reasonable forms of hill climbing I'd be very happy to hear it."
GA (specially pseudo-boolean GA) is not a "Golden Algorihtm" that solves every problem as most people think, rather it is a "idea" that was pioneered by Hollad in the sixties, now it's sole purpose is to explain the theoretical aspects of other GA-offshoot Evolutionary Optimization techniques like GP(Genetic Programming), EA (Evolutionary Algorithm), DE(Differential Evolution), ES(Evolutionary Strategy) etc, etc.
I think GP has much more impact in attacking real world problems, GECCO Humies award list has many interesting results where RMHC's may not be suitable -- http://www.genetic-programming.org/combined.html
GA (specially pseudo-boolean GA) is not a "Golden Algorihtm" that solves every problem as most people think, rather it is a "idea" that was pioneered by Hollad in the sixties, now it's sole purpose is to explain the theoretical aspects of other GA-offshoot Evolutionary Optimization techniques like GP(Genetic Programming), EA (Evolutionary Algorithm), DE(Differential Evolution), ES(Evolutionary Strategy) etc, etc.
I think GP has much more impact in attacking real world problems, GECCO Humies award list has many interesting results where RMHC's may not be suitable -- http://www.genetic-programming.org/combined.html