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The Money Pump as a Measure of Revealed Preference Violations: A Comment

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  • Bart Smeulders
  • Laurens Cherchye
  • Bram De Rock
  • Frits C. R. Spieksma

Abstract

In a recent and insightful paper, Echenique et al. [4] proposed the Money Pump Index(MPI) as an intuitive measure to evaluate the severity of violations of consumer rationality(defined in terms of revealed preference axioms). For practical applications, they suggest usingthe Mean or Median MPI. In this note, we show that computing these Median and Mean MPIis computationally hard, which makes them impractical in the case of large datasets (including"scanner" datasets as the one used by Echenique et al.). To overcome this problem, we proposeMaximum and Minimum MPIs as easy-to-apply alternatives. These MPIs preserve the intuitionof the Median and Mean MPIs and can be computed efficiently (i.e. in polynomial time). Wealso show the practical usefulness of the Maximum and Minimum MPI through an applicationto the dataset of Echenique et al..
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Suggested Citation

  • Bart Smeulders & Laurens Cherchye & Bram De Rock & Frits C. R. Spieksma, 2013. "The Money Pump as a Measure of Revealed Preference Violations: A Comment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(6), pages 1248-1258.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/674077
    DOI: 10.1086/674077
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Varian, Hal R, 1982. "The Nonparametric Approach to Demand Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 945-973, July.
    2. Bram De Rock & Bart Smeulders & Laurens Cherchye & Frits Spieksma, 2013. "Goodness of fit measures for revealed preference tests: Complexity results and algorithms," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/162939, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. 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.
    4. Nimrod Megiddo, 1979. "Combinatorial Optimization with Rational Objective Functions," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 4(4), pages 414-424, November.
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    1. Smeulders, Bart & Crama, Yves & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2019. "Revealed preference theory: An algorithmic outlook," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(3), pages 803-815.
    2. Pawel Dziewulski, 2016. "Eliciting the just-noticeable difference," Economics Series Working Papers 798, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Kohei Shiozawa, 2015. "Note on goodness-of-fit measures for the revealed preference test: The computational complexity of the minimum cost index," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(4), pages 2455-2461.
    4. Nikolay Klemashev & Alexander Shananin, 2015. "Positively-homogeneous Konus-Divisia indices and their applications to demand analysis and forecasting," Papers 1501.05771, arXiv.org.
    5. Castillo, Marco & Freer, Mikhail, 2018. "Revealed differences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 202-217.
    6. Kohei Shiozawa, 2015. "Revealed Preference Test and Shortest Path Problem; Graph Theoretic Structure of the Rationalizability Test," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 15-17-Rev.2, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics, revised Aug 2016.
    7. Andreas C Drichoutis & Rodolfo M Nayga, 2020. "Economic Rationality under Cognitive Load," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(632), pages 2382-2409.
    8. Müller, Daniel, 2019. "The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 785-807.
    9. Daniele Caliari & Valentino Dardanoni & Carla Guerriero & Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2026. "Exploring Choice Errors in Children," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 26/823, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    10. Schlee, Edward E. & Ali Khan, M., 2023. "Money-metrics in local welfare analysis: Pareto improvements and equity considerations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    11. Shiozawa, Kohei, 2016. "Revealed preference test and shortest path problem; graph theoretic structure of the rationalizability test," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 38-48.
    12. Demuynck, Thomas & Hjertstrand, Per, 2019. "Samuelson's Approach to Revealed Preference Theory: Some Recent Advances," Working Paper Series 1274, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    13. Kohei Shiozawa, 2015. "Revealed Preference Test and Shortest Path Problem; Graph Theoretic Structure of the Rationalizability Test," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 15-17-Rev., Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics, revised Jul 2015.
    14. Avner Seror, 2024. "The Moral Mind(s) of Large Language Models," AMSE Working Papers 2433, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    15. Maria Porter & Abigail Adams, 2014. "For Love or Reward? Characterising Preferences for Giving to Parents in an Experimental Setting," Economics Series Working Papers 709, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    16. Maria Porter & Abi Adams, 2016. "For Love or Reward? Characterising Preferences for Giving to Parents in an Experimental Setting," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(598), pages 2424-2445, December.
    17. 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.
    18. Daniel Müller, 2017. "The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity," Working Papers 2017-02, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck, revised Mar 2017.

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