IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/467.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Measure of Rationality and Welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Jose Apesteguia
  • Miguel Ángel Ballester

Abstract

There is ample evidence to show that choice behavior often deviates from the classical principle of maximization. This evidence raises at least two important questions: (i) how severe the deviation is and (ii) which method is the best for extracting relevant information from the choices of the individual for the purposes of welfare analysis. In this paper we address these two questions by proposing a set of foundational conditions on which to build a proper measure of the rationality of individuals, and enable individual welfare analysis of potentially inconsistent subjects, all based on standard revealed preference data. In our first result, we show that there is a unique measure of rationality that satisfies all of the proposed axioms: the weighted-loss indices. In the second part of the paper, we study some relevant properties of weighted-loss indices.

Suggested Citation

  • Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ángel Ballester, 2010. "A Measure of Rationality and Welfare," Working Papers 467, Barcelona School of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:467
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.barcelonagse.eu/sites/default/files/working_paper_pdfs/467.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009. "Behavioral Welfare Economics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 267-319, 04-05.
    2. Ariel Rubinstein & Yuval Salant, 2012. "Eliciting Welfare Preferences from Behavioural Data Sets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 375-387.
    3. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2007. "Sequentially Rationalizable Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1824-1839, December.
    4. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2012. "Revealed Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2183-2205, August.
    5. Walter Bossert & Yves Sprumont, 2009. "Non‐Deteriorating Choice," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(302), pages 337-363, April.
    6. Michael Brusco & Hans-Friedrich Köhn & Stephanie Stahl, 2008. "Heuristic Implementation of Dynamic Programming for Matrix Permutation Problems in Combinatorial Data Analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 73(3), pages 503-522, September.
    7. Yoram Halevy & Dotan Persitz & Lanny Zrill, 2018. "Parametric Recoverability of Preferences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(4), pages 1558-1593.
    8. 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.
    9. Federico Echenique & Sangmok Lee & Matthew Shum, 2011. "The Money Pump as a Measure of Revealed Preference Violations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(6), pages 1201-1223.
    10. Timothy K. M. Beatty & Ian A. Crawford, 2011. "How Demanding Is the Revealed Preference Approach to Demand?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2782-2795, October.
    11. Varian, Hal R., 1990. "Goodness-of-fit in optimizing models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 125-140.
    12. Green, Jerry & Hojman, Daniel, 2007. "Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement," Working Paper Series rwp07-054, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    13. Wilcox, Nathaniel T., 2011. "'Stochastically more risk averse:' A contextual theory of stochastic discrete choice under risk," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 162(1), pages 89-104, May.
    14. Afriat, S N, 1973. "On a System of Inequalities in Demand Analysis: An Extension of the Classical Method," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(2), pages 460-472, June.
    15. Katherine Baldiga & Jerry Green, 2013. "Assent-maximizing social choice," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(2), pages 439-460, February.
    16. 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.
    17. Faruk Gul & Paulo Natenzon & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2014. "Random Choice as Behavioral Optimization," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 1873-1912, September.
    18. Hiroki Nishimura, 2014. "The Transitive Core: Inference of Welfare from Nontransitive Preference Relations," Working Papers 201419, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    19. Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Ok, Efe A., 2005. "Rational choice with status quo bias," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 1-29, March.
    20. 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.
    21. Chalfant, James A & Alston, Julian M, 1988. "Accounting for Changes in Tastes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 391-410, April.
    22. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel A. Ballester & Rosa Ferrer, 2011. "On the Justice of Decision Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 1-16.
    23. Korte, Bernhard & Oberhofer, Walter, 1970. "Triangularizing input-output matrices and the structure of production," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 482-511.
    24. Martin Grötschel & Michael Jünger & Gerhard Reinelt, 1984. "A Cutting Plane Algorithm for the Linear Ordering Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(6), pages 1195-1220, December.
    25. Famulari, Melissa, 1995. "A Household-Based, Nonparametric Test of Demand Theory," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(2), pages 372-382, May.
    26. Howe, Eric C, 1991. "A More Powerful Method for Triangularizing Input-Output Matrices: A Comment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 521-523, March.
    27. Fukui, Yukio, 1986. "A More Powerful Method for Triangularizing Input-Output Matrices and the Similarity of Production Structures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(6), pages 1425-1433, November.
    28. Matthew Rabin & Botond Kőszegi, 2007. "Mistakes in Choice-Based Welfare Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 477-481, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Apesteguia, Jose & Ballester, Miguel A., 2013. "Choice by sequential procedures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 90-99.
    2. Yoram Halevy & Dotan Persitz & Lanny Zrill, 2018. "Parametric Recoverability of Preferences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(4), pages 1558-1593.
    3. Liang, Annie, 2019. "Inference of preference heterogeneity from choice data," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 275-311.
    4. Nishimura, Hiroki, 2018. "The transitive core: inference of welfare from nontransitive preference relations," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), May.
    5. Christopher Tyson, 2015. "Satisficing behavior with a secondary criterion," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 639-661, March.
    6. , & ,, 2013. "Choice by iterative search," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(3), September.
    7. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2012. "Revealed Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2183-2205, August.
    8. Barokas, Guy, 2019. "Choice theoretic foundation for libertarian paternalism: Reconciling the behavioral and libertarian approaches to welfare," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 62-73.
    9. Geoffroy de Clippel, 2014. "Behavioral Implementation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 2975-3002, October.
    10. Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael & Tsur, Matan, 2018. "Aspiration-based choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 935-956.
    11. Hiroki Nishimura, 2014. "The Transitive Core: Inference of Welfare from Nontransitive Preference Relations," Working Papers 201419, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    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. Dino Borie & Dorian Jullien, 2019. "Description-dependent Choices," Working Papers halshs-01651086, HAL.
    14. 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.
    15. Dalton, Patricio & Ghosal, Sayantan, 2008. "Behavioural Decisions and Welfare," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 834, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    16. Annie Liang, 2016. "Inference of Preference Heterogeneity from Choice Data," PIER Working Paper Archive 16-029, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 04 Oct 2016.
    17. Dalton, P.S. & Ghosal, S., 2010. "Behavioral Decisions and Welfare (Replaces CentER DP 2010-22)," Other publications TiSEM 274e6102-4c86-4ca9-8d67-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Guy Barokas & Burak Ünveren, 2022. "Impressionable Rational Choice: Revealed-Preference Theory with Framing Effects," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(23), pages 1-19, November.
    19. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2015. "State dependent choice," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(2), pages 239-268, September.
    20. Francesco Cerigioni, 2021. "Dual Decision Processes: Retrieving Preferences When Some Choices Are Automatic," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(6), pages 1667-1704.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rationality; Individual Welfare; Revealed Preference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare 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:bge:wpaper:467. 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: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.html .

    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.