To facilitate systematic study of multi-self decision making, this paper proposes an axiomatic framework that encompasses a variety of models proposed in economics, psychology, and marketing. We model a decision-maker as a collection of utility functions (selves) and an aggregation rule (a theory of how selves are activated by choice sets) satisfying five simple axioms of social choice. For a broad class of aggregators, we show that with sufficiently many selves the resulting model can rationalize any choice function. We propose a method for counting IIA violations in a choice behavior, and show that the set of behaviors an aggregator can rationalize using n selves is bounded below by the set of choice functions for which the number of IIA violations is at most a given linear function of n. We apply our results to study Strotzian choice over menus and household decision-making.
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Length: 35 pages Date of creation: Jul 2008 Date of revision:
Oct 2009 Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1670
Note: Supplementary Appendix, http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d16b/d1670sup.pdf Contact details of provider: Postal: Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA Phone: (203) 432-3702 Fax: (203) 432-6167 Web page: http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/ More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
DHILLONÊ, Amrita & MERTENSÊ, Jean-Franois, 1993.
"Relative Utilitarianism,"
CORE Discussion Papers
1993048, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
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