Sen’s criticism of revealed preference theory and its ‘neo-samuelsonian critique’: a methodological and theoretical assessment

This paper evaluates how Amartya Sen’s critique of revealed preference theory (RPT) stands against the latter’s contemporary, ‘neo-Samuelsonian’ version. Neo- Samuelsonians have argued that Sen’s arguments against RPT are innocuous, in particular once it is acknowledged that RPT does not assume away the existence of motivations or other latent psychological or cognitive processes. Sen’s claims that preferences and choices need to be distinguished and that external factors need to be taken into account to analyze the act of choice then appear to be irrelevant. However, while it is true that contemporary revealed preference theory (CRPT) partially evades Sen’s critique, I show that the latter is still relevant outside the restricted areas of consumer choice and market dynamics. In particular, Sen’s views regarding the importance of incomplete preferences and the multiplicity of levels of agency can hardly be integrated into the framework of CRPT. This is a significant limit, given the imperialistic claims of some of the proponents of the latter.     

Rationality without Transitivity

In this article rational choice behavior is investigated without assuming transitivity or completeness of the underlying preferences. These standard properties are replaced by a property concerning dominant alternatives. This permits the existence of preference cycles among alternatives which are dominated, while still ensuring the existence of a rational choice correspondence. We will also realize that some rational choice rules still hold in this context. Further we will see that in equilibrium analysis the existence of a competitive equilibrium follows when transitivity and completeness is replaced by this domination property.     

The road to rationalisation: A history of “Where the Empirical Lives” (or has lived) in consumer choice theory

This paper examines the different ways that economists have characterised the empirical content of modern consumer choice theory. There has been general agreement among economists that each stage in the development of the theory has been associated with an improvement in the theory's empirical content, and yet there has been no agreement about what exactly the empirical content of consumer choice theory is at any stage in the process. I call this the problem of observational ambiguity. The paper historically documents this problem, links it to various theoretical developments, and relates it to debates in contemporary economic theory.     

Introduction: methodologies of bounded rationality

The modelling of bounded rationality is currently pursued by approaches that exhibit a wide diversity of methodologies. This special issue collects five contributions that discuss different methodological aspects of these approaches. In our introduction, we map the variety of methodological positions with respect to three questions. First, what kinds of evidence do the respective approaches consider relevant for modelling bounded rationality? Second, what kind of modelling desiderata do the respective approaches focus on? And third, how do the respective approaches justify the normative validity of bounded rationality? To broaden the picture, we not only discusss the five contributions of this issue, but also include relevant positions from the extant literature.     

宏观经济政策是否有效——基于理性预期模型的分析

自《通论》发表以来,关于宏观经济政策是否有效的争论一直贯穿于整个宏观经济学界。因此,从理性预期模型出发,对于宏观经济政策是否有效进行了再分析,通过博弈论思想的引入探究了宏观经济政策能否达到理想效果。在对扩张性宏观经济政策实际效果进行分析时指出了为何会出现“滞涨”,为何近年中国经济能够实现高增长低通胀的问题。     

On Forecasting Heterogeneity, Irrational Exuberance, and the Multiplicity of Rational Expectations Equilibria

Received February 20, 2001; revised version received July 23, 2001     

What kind of preference maximization does the weak axiom of revealed preference characterize?

A (multivalued) choice is justified if no two chosen alternatives are preferred to each other, and if all chosen alternatives are preferred to all rejected alternatives. This concept permits a connection between the behavioral property expressed by WARP and a weak form of preference maximization. I am grateful to Michele Lombardi, Michael Mandler, Paola Manzini and an anonymous referee for useful discussions and comments.     

Environmental Risk and Averting Behavior: Predictive Validity of Jointly Estimated Revealed and Stated Behavior Data

We conduct predictive validity tests using revealed and stated behavior data from a panel survey of North Carolina coastal households. The application is to hurricane evacuation behavior. Data was initially collected after Hurricane Bonnie led to hurricane evacuations in North Carolina in 1998. Respondents were asked for their behavioral intentions if a hurricane threatened the North Carolina coast during the 1999 hurricane season. Following Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in 1999, a follow-up survey was conducted to see if respondents behaved as they intended. A jointly estimated revealed and stated behavior model indicates that the hypothetical and real evacuation behavior is based on the same choice process. Using predictions from this model with a hypothetical bias correction, we find that it predicts actual evacuation behavior with a small forecast error. These results suggest that stated behavior data has some degree of predictive validity.     

行为委托-代理激励新模型及分析框架

标准委托-代理激励模型及分析框架沿袭新古典经济学中关于理性经济人、偏好不变、预期效用等基本假定,存在一些无法解释的现象和悖论。本文从行为经济学对主流经济学的新古典经济学基本假设的挑战出发,对标准委托-代理激励模型及分析框架中代理人完全理性和风险规避等基本假设所带来的缺陷进行了系统分析,探究了如何利用期望理论的价值函数替代期望效用函数、有限理性替代完全理性来构建新的委托一代理激励模型及分析框架。新模型和框架考虑了代理人的心理特征和非理性行为,将增强激励模型及分析框架对现实制度的解释力和适用性。     

A general revealed preference theorem for stochastic demand behavior

Summary. We present a general revealed preference theorem concerning stochastic choice behavior by consumers. We show that, when the consumer spends her entire wealth, the Weak Axiom of Stochastic Revealed Preference due to Bandyopadhyay, Dasgupta, and Pattanaik (1999) is equivalent to a restriction on stochastic demand behavior that we call stochastic substitutability. We also show that the relationship between the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference and Samuelson's inequality in the deterministic theory, and the main result of Bandyopadhyay, Dasgupta, and Pattanaik (1999) are both special cases of our result.Received: 10 September 2001, Revised: 4 April 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: D11. Correspondence to: Prasanta K. PattanaikOur greatest debt is to the referee of this paper, who made numerous helpful suggestions. We thank Robin Cubitt, Kunal Sengupta and seminar audiences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Indian Statistical Institute, University of East Anglia, Universidad Carlos III, University of Essex and University of Montreal for their helpful comments. Prasanta K. Pattanaik acknowledges his intellectual debt to Salvador Barbera, Tapas Majumdar and Amartya Sen.