IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2403.09045.html

Entangled vs. Separable Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Nail Kashaev
  • Martin Pl'avala
  • Victor H. Aguiar

Abstract

A judge observes the joint probabilistic choice rule of two decision makers: the frequency of action pairs across pairs of local covariates. The rule is separable if behavior can be generated as if the decision makers were in separate rooms, unable to communicate at the time of choice. Separability allows arbitrary correlation in tastes, beliefs, information, and randomization devices; it rules out only covariate-dependent coordination. It is therefore the revealed-preference null of social independence, not statistical independence. We construct an exact judge for separability: a complete nonparametric characterization requiring no rationality, utility maximization, equilibrium, or parametric structure. In the binary-covariate, binary-action case, separability is equivalent to no-signaling plus Bell-type CHSH inequalities. In general finite domains, it is equivalent to a no-signaling extension to finitely many virtual replicas of one decision maker, yielding a finite system of linear restrictions. The judge matters because entangled choice rules can pass no-signaling tests while violating separability. We illustrate this in match rigging, plea bargaining, classroom cheating, and an LLM-based agentic system.

Suggested Citation

  • Nail Kashaev & Martin Pl'avala & Victor H. Aguiar, 2024. "Entangled vs. Separable Choice," Papers 2403.09045, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2026.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2403.09045
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.09045
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Davide Carpentiere & Alfio Giarlotta & Angelo Petralia & Ester Sudano, 2025. "Separable joint choices," Papers 2504.03056, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2403.09045. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    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.