Counterfactual conditionals are cognitive tools that we incessantly use during our lives for judgments, evaluations, decisions. Counterfactuals are used for defining concepts as well; an instance of this is attested by the notions of opportunity cost and excess profit, two all-pervasive notions of economics: They are defined by undoing a given scenario and constructing a suitable counterfactual milieu. Focussing on the standard paradigm [Peasnell, 1981, 1982; Peccati, 1987, 1990, 1991; Ohlson, 1995] and Magni’s [2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006] alternative paradigm this paper shows that the formal translation of the counterfactual state is not univocal and that Magni’s approach retains formal properties of symmetry, additive coherence, homeomorphism, which correspond to properties of frame-independence, time invariance, completeness. Two introductory studies are also presented to illustrate how people cope with these counterfactuals and ascertain whether either model is seen as more “natural”. A brief discussion of the results obtained is also provided.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D46 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Value Theory M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Accounting - - - Accounting G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics
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Abel, Andrew B., 1990.
"Consumption and investment,"
Handbook of Monetary Economics,
in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 14, pages 725-778
Elsevier.
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