IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2003.06844.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Model of Justification

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Ridout

Abstract

I consider decision-making constrained by considerations of morality, rationality, or other virtues. The decision maker (DM) has a true preference over outcomes, but feels compelled to choose among outcomes that are top-ranked by some preference that he considers "justifiable." This model unites a broad class of empirical work on distributional preferences, charitable donations, prejudice/discrimination, and corruption/bribery. I provide a behavioral characterization of the model. I also show that the set of justifications can be identified from choice behavior when the true preference is known, and that choice behavior substantially restricts both the true preference and justifications when neither is known. I argue that the justifiability model represents an advancement over existing models of rationalization because the structure it places on possible "rationales" improves tractability, interpretation and identification.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Ridout, 2020. "A Model of Justification," Papers 2003.06844, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2003.06844
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.06844
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Faruk Gul & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2005. "The Revealed Preference Theory of Changing Tastes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(2), pages 429-448.
    2. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara & Luis Moreno-Garrido, 2012. "Self-interest and fairness: self-serving choices of justice principles," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 158-175, March.
    3. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2007. "Sequentially Rationalizable Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1824-1839, December.
    4. Gil Kalai & Ariel Rubinstein & Ran Spiegler, 2002. "Rationalizing Choice Functions By Multiple Rationales," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2481-2488, November.
    5. , & ,, 2012. "Ashamed to be selfish," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(1), January.
    6. John R. Hamman & George Loewenstein & Roberto A. Weber, 2010. "Self-Interest through Delegation: An Additional Rationale for the Principal-Agent Relationship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1826-1846, September.
    7. 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.
    8. Christine L. Exley, 2016. "Excusing Selfishness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(2), pages 587-628.
    9. David Dillenberger & Philipp Sadowski, 2008. "Ashamed to be Selfish," PIER Working Paper Archive 08-037, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    10. Holt, Charles A, 1986. "Preference Reversals and the Independence Axiom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 508-515, June.
    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. Juan Lleras & Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Ozbay, 2021. "Path-Independent Consideration," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, March.

    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. Boissonnet, Niels & Ghersengorin, Alexis & Gleyze, Simon, 2020. "Revealed Deliberate Preference Changes," MPRA Paper 101756, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Noor, Jawwad & Takeoka, Norio, 2015. "Menu-dependent self-control," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-20.
    3. 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.
    4. Qiu, Jianying, 2015. "Completing incomplete preferences," MPRA Paper 91692, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Jul 2016.
    5. Qiu, Jianying, 2015. "Completing incomplete preferences," MPRA Paper 72933, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Jul 2016.
    6. Jinkwon Lee & Sujin Min, 2021. "The effects of repeated induction of emotions on cooperation and punishment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 925-943, July.
    7. Mandler, Michael, 2015. "Rational agents are the quickest," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 206-233.
    8. Thomas Demuynck, 2014. "The computational complexity of rationalizing Pareto optimal choice behavior," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(3), pages 529-549, March.
    9. 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.
    10. Griffith, Rachel & O'Connell, Martin & Smith, Kate & Cherchye, Laurens & De Rock, Bram & Vermeulen, Frederic, 2017. "A new year, a new you? Heterogeneity and self-control in food purchases," CEPR Discussion Papers 12499, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Manzini, Paola & Mariotti, Marco & Tyson, Christopher J., 2016. "Partial knowledge restrictions on the two-stage threshold model of choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-47.
    12. Domenico Cantone & Alfio Giarlotta & Stephen Watson, 2021. "Choice resolutions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(4), pages 713-753, May.
    13. Saito, Kota, 2015. "Impure altruism and impure selfishness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PA), pages 336-370.
    14. Attila Ambrus & Kareen Rozen, 2015. "Rationalising Choice with Multi‐self Models," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(585), pages 1136-1156, June.
    15. Leonardo Bursztyn & Ingar K. Haaland & Aakaash Rao & Christopher P. Roth, 2020. "Disguising Prejudice: Popular Rationales as Excuses for Intolerant Expression," NBER Working Papers 27288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Roland Benabou & Armin Falk & Jean Tirole, 2018. "Narratives, Imperatives, and Moral Reasoning," Working Papers id:12918, eSocialSciences.
    17. Manzini, Paola & Mariotti, Marco & Tyson, Christopher J., 2016. "Partial knowledge restrictions on the two-stage threshold model of choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-47.
    18. Leonardo Bursztyn & Georgy Egorov & Ingar Haaland & Aakaash Rao & Christopher Roth, 2023. "Justifying Dissent," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(3), pages 1403-1451.
    19. Sophie Bade, 2016. "Pareto-optimal matching allocation mechanisms for boundedly rational agents," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(3), pages 501-510, October.
    20. Valentino Dardanoni & Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti & Christopher J. Tyson, 2020. "Inferring Cognitive Heterogeneity From Aggregate Choices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1269-1296, May.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2003.06844. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.