Incomplete preferences and rational intransitivity of choice

Do violations of classical rationality theory imply that agents are acting against their self-interest? To answer this question, we investigate whether completeness and transitivity necessarily hold when agents choose outcome rationally—that is, their choice sequences do not lead to dominated outcomes. We show that, because of the danger of money pumps and other manipulations, outcome rationality implies that agents must have transitive psychological preferences. Revealed preferences, on the other hand, must be complete since agents can be forced to choose from any set of options. But these justifications of transitivity and completeness cannot be combined. We show that if psychological preferences are incomplete then revealed preferences can be intransitive without exposing agents to manipulations or violating outcome rationality. We also show that a specific case of nonstandard behavior, status quo maintenance, is outcome-rational in the simple environments considered in the experimental literature, but not in more complex settings.     

Choices, situations, and happiness

This article explores some conceptual issues in the study of well-being using the traditional economic approach of inferring preferences solely from choice behavior. We argue that choice behavior alone can never reveal which situations make people better off, even with unlimited data and under the maintained hypothesis of 100% rational choice. Ancillary assumptions or additional forms of data such as happiness measures are always needed. With such ancillary assumptions and additional data, however, the use of revealed preference to study well-being can be significantly improved, so that the choices people make can jointly identify preferences, mistakes, and well-being.     

Pooling and endogenous market incompleteness

Summary. We study a financial market economy with a continuum of borrowers and pooling of borrowers promises. Under these conditions and in the absence of designing costs, utility-maximizing decisions of price-taking borrowers may lead to financial market incompleteness. Parametrizing equilibria through the borrowers no-arbitrage beliefs, we link expectations to the financial market structure. Markets are complete if and only if borrowers beliefs are homogeneous. Price-taking behavior causes a coordination problem which in turn yields indeterminacy and inefficiency of equilibrium allocations.Received: 29 May 2003, Revised: 13 February 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D50, D52.Correspondence to: Alessandro CitannaWe would like to thank David Cass, John Geanakoplos, Thorsten Hens, Atsushi Kajii, and an anonymous referee for their comments. The first author also thanks CERMSEM (Paris I) and Columbia University Graduate School of Business for the hospitality. A first version of this paper has appeared as GSIA Working Paper #1997-E137, Carnegie Mellon University, which itself revised Citanna and Villanacci (1995).     

Asset prices and business cycles under market incompleteness

In this paper, we study the quantitative implications of a real business cycle model where the firm is the capital owner, households are heterogeneous, and markets are incomplete due to restricted asset trade. Since, under these assumptions, the usual firm objective is no longer well defined, several non-standard objectives are incorporated into the model. These include variants of market value maximization and a utility function for the firm. We find that the presence of market incompleteness alters little the behavior of asset returns. On the other hand, the behavior of the macroeconomic aggregates is quite sensitive to the firm objective, which affects the capital accumulation path. In contrast to conventional findings, capital is not necessarily higher when markets are incomplete. In addition, the different capital accumulation effects imply that shareholders with different asset wealth might prefer different firm objectives.     

不完备偏好理论及其应用综述

本文在不完备偏好理论近期文献的基础上,以联系偏好和行为的一致性条件为主线,阐述了不完备偏好显示理论的最新进展:由Γ-理性化转向Δ-理性化,选择集由消费束转向机会集;分别在确定性和不确定性的经济环境下,回顾了不完备偏好的函数表示理论的发展脉络,即由单维函数转向多维函数;特别是,在不确定性的经济环境下,讨论了两种可能的不完备偏好(口味不决和信念不决)的函数表示理论;整理归纳了不完备偏好理论在行为经济学和博弈论等经济学领域中的若干应用。     

Individually rational rules for the division problem when the number of units to be allotted is endogenous

We study individually rational rules to be used to allot, among a group of agents, a perfectly divisible good that is freely available only in whole units. A rule is individually rational if, at each preference profile, each agent finds that her allotment is at least as good as any whole unit of the good. We study and characterize two individually rational and efficient families of rules, whenever agents' preferences are symmetric single-peaked on the set of possible allotments. Rules in the two families are in addition envy-free, but they differ on whether envy-freeness is considered on losses or on awards. Our main result states that (a) the family of constrained equal losses rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy justified envy-freeness on losses and (b) the family of constrained equal awards rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy envy-freeness on awards.     

Revealed preference and differentiable demand

Summary. We prove that, for finitely many demand observations, the Strong Axiom of Revealed Preference tests not only the existence of a strictly concave, strictly monotone and continuous utility generator, but also one that generates an infinitely differentiable demand function. Our results extend those of previous related results (Matzkin and Richter, 1991; Chiappori and Rochet, 1987), yielding differentiable demand functions but without requiring differentiable utility functions.Received: 1 November 2001, Revised: 5 February 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D11, D12. Correspondence to: Kam-Chau WongThis is a much revised version of Lee and Wong (2001). We are grateful to the Referee for valuable suggestions. We also thank Professor Marcel K. Richter for his comments.     

Information, trade and incomplete markets

The no-trade result of Milgrom and Stokey, J Econ Theory 26:17–27 (1982), states that if rational traders begin with an ex-ante Pareto optimal allocation then the arrival of information cannot generate trade. This paper allows traders to trade before and after the arrival of information. If there are enough securities to hedge against all payoff relevant risk, then the preinformation-arrival allocation is Pareto optimal and information arrival has no effect. This no-retrade result is the competitive analog of the no-trade result of (1982). However, information generically generates trade when markets are state-contingent incomplete.We thank seminar participants at Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon,Cornell, Essex, London, Maastricht, USC, and York and participants at the 2003 SITE, the 2003 SAET and the Fall 2002 Cornell–Penn State Macro Conference. We also thank Karl Shell and a referee for this journal for useful comments     

Preference purification and the inner rational agent: a critique of the conventional wisdom of behavioural welfare economics

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of the human being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic.     

Infinite inequality systems and cardinal revelations

Summary. Many economics problems are maximization or minimization problems, and can be formalized as problems of solving linear difference systems of the form and r _k -r _l > c _kl , for r-unknowns, with given c-constants. They typically involve strict as well as weak inequalities, with infinitely many inequalities and unknowns. Since strict inequalities are not preserved under passage to the limit, infinite systems with strict inequalities are notoriously hard to solve. We introduce a unifying tool for solving them. Our main result (Theorem 1 for the countable case, Theorem [2] for the not-necessarily-countable case) introduces a uniform solvability criterion (the -Axiom), and our proof yields a method for solving those that are solvable. The axioms economic intuition extends the traditional ordinal notion of revealed preference to a cardinal notion. We give applications in producer theory, consumer theory, implementation theory, and constrained maximization theory.Received: 21 May 2003, Revised: 29 October 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: C69, D21, D11, D82. Correspondence to: Marcel K. RichterWe thank Professor Leonid Hurwicz for helpful discussions, and a referee for helpful comments.     

Rational inattention and revealed preference: The data-theoretic approach to economic modeling

Beliefs have as pervasive a role as utility functions in economic models of choice, and are no more visible to the naked eye. This suggests the value of a data-theoretic approach to imperfect information along the lines of Samuelson's “revealed preference” approach to utility maximization. I introduce a recently developed approach of this nature (Caplin and Martin, 2013a, Caplin and Dean, 2013a, Caplin and Dean, 2013b). I highlight the broader potential of the data-theoretic approach to answer questions of an inter-disciplinary nature and to discipline an oncoming flood of behaviorally-relevant data.     

Retailers as agents and the limits of parallel trade

The volume of retail-level parallel trade is surprisingly small despite persistent international price differences. We offer an agency-based explanation by considering competition between an original home manufacturer and a foreign retailer. The model endogenizes the role of the retailer as an agent with private information on the perceived quality of the good in its own market. The manufacturer cannot control the retailer once the latter has ordered its sales quantity but it can limit the initial offer. If parallel trade is permitted, this offer will fall if there is incomplete information, resulting in a small, or zero, volume of parallel trade. This outcome makes both the original producer and foreign consumers worse off, while offering little benefit to home consumers, compared to the case where such trade is banned.     

Mathematical utility theory and the representability of demand by continuous homogeneous functions

The resort to utility-theoretical issues will permit us to propose a constructive procedure for deriving a homogeneous of degree one continuous function that gives raise to a primitive demand function under suitably mild conditions. This constitutes the first self-contained and elementary proof of a necessary and sufficient condition for an integrability problem to have a solution by continuous (subjective utility) functions.The work of José C. R. Alcantud has been supported by FEDER and Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia under the Research Project SEJ2005-0304/ECON, and by Consejería de Educación (Junta de Castilla y León) under the Research Project SA098A05. Carlos R. Palmero acknowledges financial support by FEDER and Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia under the Research Project SEJ2005-08709/ECON, and by Consejería de Educación (Junta de Castilla y León) under the Research Project VA017B05.     

Rationalizability and the savage axioms

Summary. Suppose there is a finite set of acts defined on a finite state space and a decision maker chooses an act from the set. In this setting, the subjective expected utility model is observationally indistinguishable from all models of preference that satisfy Savage's axiom P3. The result has implications also for rationalizability in strategic games. Received: September 18, 1998; revised version: January 29, 1999     

Stability,sequential rationality,and subgame consistency

In this paper we analyze dynamic strategic behavior by means of the idea of "stability." We develop a solution concept of "sequentially stable equilibrium (SSE)" that satisfies subgame consistency. All SSEs are characterized by the largest stable set that yields exactly all the backward induction outcomes. We also provide a refinement of the SSE. We compare the SSE and its refinement with some existing solution concepts in the literature We are grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for very useful comments and suggestions that led to this revision. We thank Chih Chang, Yi-Chun Chen, Chenying Huang, Huiwen Koo, Man-Chung Ng, Shyh-fang Ueng, and Chun-Hsien Yeh for helpful comments and discussions. We also thank participants in seminars at Academia Sinica, National Dong Hwa University, and the Third Pan-Pacific Game Theory Conference. Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the National Science Council of Taiwan, and the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Profit maximization and supermodular technology

A dataset is a list of observed factor inputs and prices for a technology; profits and production levels are unobserved. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for a dataset to be consistent with profit maximization under a monotone and concave revenue based on the notion of cyclic monotonicity. Our result implies that monotonicity and concavity cannot be tested, and that one cannot decide if a firm is competitive based on factor demands. We also introduce a condition, cyclic supermodularity, which is both necessary and sufficient for data to be consistent with a supermodular technology. Cyclic supermodularity provides a test for complementarity of production factors. We are very grateful to two anonymous referees for suggestions, comments, and corrections. We also thank Kim Border for his suggestions on an earlier draft.     

Individually rational, budget-balanced mechanisms and allocation of surplus

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We show that all decision rules generating a nonnegative expected social surplus are implementable via such mechanisms if and only if the probability distribution of the agents’ type profiles satisfies two conditions: the well-known condition of Crémer and McLean [1988. Full extraction of the surplus in Bayesian and dominant strategy auctions, Econometrica 56, 1247–1257] and the Identifiability condition introduced in this paper. We also show that these conditions are necessary for ex-post efficiency to be attainable with budget balance and individual rationality, and that the expected social surplus in these mechanisms can be distributed in any desirable way. Lastly, we demonstrate that, like Crémer–McLean condition, the Identifiability condition is generic if there are at least three agents.     

A matter of interpretation: Ambiguous contracts and liquidated damages

We consider the optimality of liquidated damages contracts in a setting of contractual ambiguity and potential for disputes. We show that when parties are ambiguity averse enough, they will optimally choose liquidated damages contracts and sacrifice risk sharing opportunities.     

研发合作中的产权结构与投资激励

不完全合同背景下,产权分配在参与方的投资决策中至关重要。利用产权理论讨论了研发合作中的序贯投资决策和创新的产权分配问题。研究表明,最优产权结构随着参与方的谈判力变动,谈判力较低的一方单独拥有产权能够平衡其投资积极性;随着投资关系专用性程度的增加,最优产权为联合产权在产品开发者谈判力区间的范围更广。为了提高双方合作效率,可考虑采用由一个产品开发者出价并按照研究单位投资积极性分配初始产权的期权合同。比较分析发现：期权合同能够缓解投资不足问题,并进一步提高双方合作效率。     

理性的边界与个体主义方法论的局限性

本文致力于弄清三个方面的问题：（1）通过梳理在确定性和不确定性条件下理性偏好的最新研究成果,指出理性的边界,揭示主流经济学个体主义方法论的局限性。（2）通过考察阿罗不可能性定理的条件,提出阿罗不可能性定理的逆否命题,探索摆脱阿罗不可能性定理的途径和社会福利函数存在的条件。（3）根据阿罗不可能性定理,指出个体主义方法论在分析个人理性和集体理性、微观经济学和宏观经济学、个人效用和社会福利之间的关系时遭遇的困难,进而提出用整体主义方法论解决此类问题的思路。本文认为,制度和规则是社会的灵魂,在规则的语境下新古典经济学和制度经济学不是对立而是互补的。