IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v176y2018icp935-956.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aspiration-based choice

Author

Listed:
  • Guney, Begum
  • Richter, Michael
  • Tsur, Matan

Abstract

Numerous studies and experiments suggest that aspirations for desired but perhaps unavailable alternatives influence decisions. A common finding is that an unavailable aspiration steers agents to choose similar available alternatives. We propose and axiomatically characterize a choice theory consistent with this aspirational effect. Similarity is modeled using a subjective metric derived from choice data. This model offers implications for consumer welfare and its distribution between rich and poor when firms compete for aspirational agents, and a novel rationale for sales.

Suggested Citation

  • Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael & Tsur, Matan, 2018. "Aspiration-based choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 935-956.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:176:y:2018:i:c:p:935-956
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.05.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053118301613
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2018.05.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stutzer, Alois, 2004. "The role of income aspirations in individual happiness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 89-109, May.
    2. Rubinstein, Ariel & Zhou, Lin, 1999. "Choice problems with a 'reference' point," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 205-209, May.
    3. Debraj Ray & Arthur Robson, 2012. "Status, Intertemporal Choice, and Risk‐Taking," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(4), pages 1505-1531, July.
    4. Philipp Kircher & Andrew Postlewaite, 2008. "Strategic Firms and Endogenous Consumer Emulation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 621-661.
    5. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    6. Bendor, Jonathan & Diermeier, Daniel & Ting, Michael M., 2000. "A Behavioral Model of Turnout," Research Papers 1627, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    7. Ed Hopkins & Tatiana Kornienko, 2004. "Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1085-1107, September.
    8. Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Ok, Efe A., 2005. "Rational choice with status quo bias," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 1-29, March.
    9. Pollak, Robert A, 1976. "Interdependent Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(3), pages 309-320, June.
    10. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "Salience and Consumer Choice," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(5), pages 803-843.
    11. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2012. "Revealed Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2183-2205, August.
    13. Garance Genicot & Debraj Ray, 2017. "Aspirations and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 489-519, March.
    14. Hiroki Nishimura & Efe A. Ok & John K.-H. Quah, 2017. "A Comprehensive Approach to Revealed Preference Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1239-1263, April.
    15. Bendor, Jonathan & Diermeier, Daniel & Ting, Michael, 2003. "A Behavioral Model of Turnout," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 261-280, May.
    16. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    17. Botond Koszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2007. "Reference-Dependent Risk Attitudes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1047-1073, September.
    18. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    19. Peter H. Farquhar & Anthony R. Pratkanis, 1993. "Decision Structuring with Phantom Alternatives," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(10), pages 1214-1226, October.
    20. Igal Hendel & Aviv Nevo, 2003. "The Post-Promotion Dip Puzzle: What do the Data Have to Say?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 409-424, December.
    21. ,, 2006. "Competition over agents with boundedly rational expectations," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(2), pages 207-231, June.
    22. Jonathan Chapman & Pietro Ortoleva & Erik Snowberg & Colin Camerer & Mark Dean, 2017. "Willingness-To-Pay and Willingness-To-Accept are Probably Less Correlated than You Think," CESifo Working Paper Series 6492, CESifo.
    23. Bendor, Jonathan & Diermeier, Daniel & Ting, Michael M., 2016. "Inequality, Aspirations, and Social Comparisons," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 451-476, September.
    24. Emir Kamenica, 2008. "Contextual Inference in Markets: On the Informational Content of Product Lines," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2127-2149, December.
    25. Botond Koszegi & Adam Szeidl, 2013. "A Model of Focusing in Economic Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 53-104.
    26. Thorstein Veblen, 1899. "Mr. Cummings's Strictures on "The Theory of the Leisure Class"," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8, pages 106-106.
    27. Karandikar, Rajeeva & Mookherjee, Dilip & Ray, Debraj & Vega-Redondo, Fernando, 1998. "Evolving Aspirations and Cooperation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 292-331, June.
    28. B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009. "Behavioral Welfare Economics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 267-319, 04-05.
    29. Ariel Rubinstein & Yuval Salant, 2006. "Two Comments on the Principle of Revealed Preference," Levine's Bibliography 321307000000000272, UCLA Department of Economics.
    30. Spiegler, Ran, 2014. "Bounded Rationality and Industrial Organization," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199334261.
    31. Pettibone, Jonathan C. & Wedell, Douglas H., 2000. "Examining Models of Nondominated Decoy Effects across Judgment and Choice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 300-328, March.
    32. Kalai, Ehud & Smorodinsky, Meir, 1975. "Other Solutions to Nash's Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(3), pages 513-518, May.
    33. Borgers, Tilman & Sarin, Rajiv, 2000. "Naive Reinforcement Learning with Endogenous Aspirations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(4), pages 921-950, November.
    34. Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael, 2015. "An experiment on aspiration-based choice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 512-526.
    35. Highhouse, Scott, 1996. "Context-Dependent Selection: The Effects of Decoy and Phantom Job Candidates," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 68-76, January.
    36. Vadim Cherepanov & Tim Feddersen & Alvaro Sandroni, 2013. "Revealed preferences and aspirations in warm glow theory," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(3), pages 501-535, November.
    37. B. Douglas Bernheim & Antonio Rangel, 2009. "Beyond Revealed Preference: Choice-Theoretic Foundations for Behavioral Welfare Economics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 51-104.
    38. Yuval Salant & Ariel Rubinstein, 2008. "(A, f): Choice with Frames -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(4), pages 1287-1296.
    39. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Efe A. Ok, 2014. "A Canonical Model of Choice with Initial Endowments," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 851-883.
    40. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Collin Raymond, 2016. "A Behavioral Analysis of Stochastic Reference Dependence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2760-2782, September.
    41. Veblen, Thorstein, 1899. "The Theory of the Leisure Class," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number veblen1899.
    42. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2007. "Sequentially Rationalizable Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1824-1839, December.
    43. Paulo Natenzon, 2019. "Random Choice and Learning," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(1), pages 419-457.
    44. Efe A. Ok & Pietro Ortoleva & Gil Riella, 2015. "Revealed (P)Reference Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 299-321, January.
    45. Andrea Isoni & Graham Loomes & Robert Sugden, 2011. "The Willingness to Pay—Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 991-1011, April.
    46. Huber, Joel & Payne, John W & Puto, Christopher, 1982. "Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives: Violations of Regularity and the Similarity Hypothesis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(1), pages 90-98, June.
    47. Pollak, Robert A, 1970. "Habit Formation and Dynamic Demand Functions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(4), pages 745-763, Part I Ju.
    48. Evren, Özgür & Ok, Efe A., 2011. "On the multi-utility representation of preference relations," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 554-563.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vladimir Novak & Andrei Matveenko & Silvio Ravaioli, 2021. "The Status Quo and Belief Polarization of Inattentive Agents: Theory and Experiment," Working Papers 674, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    2. Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael, 2018. "Costly switching from a status quo," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 55-70.
    3. Eszter Czibor & Danny Hsu & David Jimenez-Gomez & Susanne Neckermann & Burcu Subasi, 2022. "Loss-Framed Incentives and Employee (Mis-)Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(10), pages 7518-7537, October.
    4. José Ramón Uriarte & Stefan Sperlich, 2021. "A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-17, June.
    5. DasGupta, Ranjan & Dhochak, Monika, 2021. "Risk-Antecedents of Firms and Strategic Mediators – New Evidence from a Cross-Country Analysis," American Business Review, Pompea College of Business, University of New Haven, vol. 24(1), pages 3-35, May.
    6. Stefan Sperlich & Jose-Ramon Uriarte, 2019. "The economics of minority language use: theory and empirical evidence for a language game model," Papers 1908.11604, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hassan Nosratabadi, 2017. "Referential Revealed Preference Theory," Departmental Working Papers 201707, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    2. Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael, 2015. "An experiment on aspiration-based choice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 512-526.
    3. Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael, 2018. "Costly switching from a status quo," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 55-70.
    4. Ronayne, David & Brown, Gordon D.A., 2016. "Multi-attribute decision by sampling: An account of the attraction, comprimise and similarity effects," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1124, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    5. Özgür Kıbrıs & Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Elchin Suleymanov, 2023. "A theory of reference point formation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(1), pages 137-166, January.
    6. Georgios Gerasimou, 2016. "Partially dominant choice," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(1), pages 127-145, January.
    7. Dean, Mark & Kıbrıs, Özgür & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan, 2017. "Limited attention and status quo bias," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 93-127.
    8. Tserenjigmid, Gerelt, 2019. "Choosing with the worst in mind: A reference-dependent model," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 631-652.
    9. T. Hayashi & R. Jain & V. Korpela & M. Lombardi, 2023. "Behavioral strong implementation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1257-1287, November.
    10. Mark Dean & Ozgur Kibris & Yusufcan Masatlioglu, 2014. "Limited Attention and Status Quo Bias," Working Papers 2014-11, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    11. Georgios, Gerasimou, 2013. "A Behavioural Model of Choice in the Presence of Decision Conflict," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-25, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    12. Ghosal, Sayantan & Dalton, Patricio, 2013. "Characterizing Behavioral Decisions with Choice Data," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 107, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    13. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "Salience and Consumer Choice," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(5), pages 803-843.
    14. Nosratabadi, Hassan, 2022. "Reference-dependent choice under plurality rule," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 88-98.
    15. Xavier Gabaix, 2017. "Behavioral Inattention," NBER Working Papers 24096, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Xi Zhi Lim, 2021. "Ordered Reference Dependent Choice," Papers 2105.12915, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    17. Bachi, Benjamin & Spiegler, Ran, 2018. "Buridanic competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 298-315.
    18. Geoffroy de Clippel, 2012. "Behavioral Implementation," Working Papers 2012-6, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    19. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Elchin Suleymanov, 2021. "Decision making within a product network," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 185-209, February.
    20. Riella, Gil & Teper, Roee, 2014. "Probabilistic dominance and status quo bias," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 288-304.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Choice; Similarity; Aspirations; Consumer welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:176:y:2018:i:c:p:935-956. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.