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Indecisiveness, Undesirability and Overload Revealed Through Rational Choice Deferral

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  • Gerasimou, Georgios

Abstract

Three reasons why decision makers may defer choice are *indecisiveness* between feasible options, *unattractiveness* of these options and *choice overload*. This paper provides a choice-theoretic explanation for each of these phenomena by means of three deferral-permissive models of decision making that are driven by preference incompleteness, undesirability and complexity constraints, respectively. These models feature *rational* choice deferral in the sense that whenever the individual does choose an option from a menu, this is a most preferred option in that menu, so that choices are always WARP-consistent. The models also allow for the use of observable data to recover the individual's preferences and, where applicable, the indecisiveness and undesirability components of these preferences.

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  • Gerasimou, Georgios, 2015. "Indecisiveness, Undesirability and Overload Revealed Through Rational Choice Deferral," MPRA Paper 67290, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:67290
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Buturak, Gökhan & Evren, Özgür, 2017. "Choice overload and asymmetric regret," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), September.
    2. Georgios Gerasimou, 2016. "Asymmetric dominance, deferral, and status quo bias in a behavioral model of choice," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 80(2), pages 295-312, February.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Choice deferral; incomplete preferences; indecisiveness; unattractiveness; choice overload; revealed preference.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory

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