理性选择向非理性选择转化的行为分析

本文针对不确定条件下的人类选择行为提出一个新的可供研究的观点:人的非理性选择在很大程度上是由理性选择转化而来的。文章首先简要评说了早期行为经济学的动物实验和认知心理学,认为人的选择行为是理性和非理性的同构;继而,通过解析丹尼尔·卡尼曼等人创立的前景理论所蕴涵的理性向非理性选择转化的思想,构建了这种转化的抽象模型;最后,作为对本文分析观点的一种联系实际的论证,研究了金融市场中的非理性选择以说明这种转化现象的客观存在。本文的分析可视为对行为经济学非理性选择理论之深邃见解的一种挖掘。     

Why rationality is not a consequence of Hume's theory of choice

This paper argues that the theory of action proposed by Hume in the Treatise does not imply that individuals are rational in the sense of modern choice theory. An individual's behaviour is non-rational if his/her choices systematically contravene the consistency axioms of the theory, and if the causal explanation of those choices cannot credibly be offered as a reason for making them. Hume proposes a theory of causal relationships between mental states, based on associations of ideas. The relationships he postulates are liable to induce various forms of non-rational behaviour, some of which have since been observed in controlled experiments.     

Core rationalizability in two-agent exchange economies

Summary. We provide a characterization of selection correspondences in two-person exchange economies that can be core rationalized in the sense that there exists a preference profile with some standard properties that generates the observed choices as the set of core elements of the economy for any given endowment vector. The approach followed in this paper deviates from the standard rational choice model in that a rationalization in terms of a profile of individual orderings rather than in terms of a single individual or social preference relation is analyzed. Received: April 20, 2000; revised version: September 25, 2001     

Sad or Happy? The Effects of Emotions on Stated Preferences for Environmental Goods

A substantial literature in behavioural science and psychology shows that emotions affect human choices and values. This paper investigates whether such emotional impacts are also present in stated choice experiments for environmental goods. If this were so, it would introduce an additional element of context dependence to the welfare measures derived from such methods, and would be at odds with the rational choice model underlying welfare economics. A laboratory experiment using three different emotion treatments was combined with a stated preference choice experiment concerned with changes in coastal water quality and fish populations in New Zealand. No statistically significant effects of changes in emotional state on estimated preference parameters, willingness to pay or the randomness of choices were found. The paper concludes by questioning, why such a contrast exists with empirical findings in behavioural science.     

Towards Sustainable Consumption: Economics and Ethical Concerns for the Environment in Consumer Choices

The article examines individual action informed by ethical concerns for the environment as a strategy for moving toward more sustainable consumption. The article first employs a model of rational choice to analyze independent consumer choices among the usually assumed self- and welfare-centered consumers and then expands the model to analyze the implications of other than self- and welfare-centered motivations for consumer choice. The article next analyzes interdependent consumer choices informed by self- and welfare-centered values with the help of a simple game-theoretic model and then moves on to examine the implications of nonutilitarian environmental concerns for interdependent consumer choice in the same game-theoretic framework. The article concludes that although a strategy based on individual action may have limited promise when environmental concerns are widely shared, the case for collective action remains strong because of both efficiency and equity reasons.     

The Role of Culture and Meaning in Rational Choice

The Wason card selection and the Tversky &; Kahneman frame anomaly are examined in the context of a probabilistic, constructivist biological model of decision-making. Rational choice requires that decision-makers understand the meaning of the choices they confront. In fact, the determination of meaning and the process of rational choice represent two sides the same coin. Further, perception, cognition and action are ill-posed problems. To solve these problems ‘missing data’ must be supplied by the brain. This data is acquired by both ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes. These evolutionary processes facilitate the determination of meaning and as a product of that process also facilitate the construction of rationality. Two interrelated brain systems involved in this construction process are examined: an emotional system that rapidly and non-consciously assigns reward expectancy values to objects in the environment and a sensory-motor system that participates in the discovery of more general information that facilitates environment/body interactions. Jointly, these systems help a naïve agent to find ‘meaning in an unlabeled world’ and to predict the outcomes of future interactions with that world by supplying ‘background’ information, i.e., by supplying the missing data necessary for rational choice. This ‘background’ represents the imprint of the statistical structure of the world on the brain and, as such, embodies the individual’s Bayesian priors. Lack of sufficient background capacities can result in systematic judgment errors and seemingly irrational decisions. Complex culture is a key aspect of the environment that facilitates the construction of rationality, in part, by becoming internalized as background. Culture facilitates the creation of complex social constructs that contribute to cultural evolution, reduce uncertainty, and increase rationality; however, cultural evolution can get ahead of itself—potentially leading to background failure and errors in judgment and choice. Finally, it is not simply complexity or lack of hands-on experience that lead to error: an additional component that might be called semantic opacity is necessary.     

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.     

Emotional Temperature,Probabilistic Choice and the Optimal Power of Incentives*

From the time of Plato it has been assumed that emotions cloud rational thinking. Fully rational individuals were supposed to be completely free of emotions. Modern psychological research challenged this paradigm. One of the insights of this research is that though emotions indeed interfere with the ability to evaluate the objective consequences of choices, they also allow the decision maker to feel the difference in utility arising from those choices. In this article, I formalise this intuition by introducing the concept of emotional temperature. I show that there exists a positive optimal emotional temperature, which leads to an irreducible probability of suboptimal choice. I apply the model to characterise the optimal contracts under moral hazard, assuming that the emotional temperature of the decision maker increases when the contract provides more powerful incentives. A more general point the article makes is that a mechanism designer needs to be aware that the mechanism will not only affect incentives but also the degree of rationality of the agents.     

Welfare economics and bounded rationality: the case for model-based approaches

In this paper, we examine the problems facing a policy maker who observes inconsistent choices made by agents who are boundedly rational. We contrast a model-less and a model-based approach to welfare economics. We make the case for the model-based approach and examine its advantages as well as some problematic issues associated with it.     

软件外包企业技术成长模式选择的演化博弈分析

在分析软件外包企业的技术成长模式的基础上,运用演化博弈理论,构建了同质企业技术成长模式选择的复制者动态模型,分析了其技术成长模式选择的动态演化过程。得出结论:企业的技术成长模式选择与其收益密切相关,且受行业内其他企业选择的影响。据此针对企业技术成长策略的选择提出建议。     

风险、社会保障与农村宗教信仰

遵循理性选择研究范式,本文研究了农村社会保障与农村信教行为之间的关系.实证分析结果表明,风险是宗教选择和宗教参与的一个重要决定因素;目前农村社会保障水平对信仰量变有显著影响,但对信仰质变尚不够构成显著影响;"新农合"的开展能够有效地降低农村宗教信仰的增长速度.这些结果可以对农村"宗教热"现象进行解释:世俗社会对于农村居民所面临风险的不作为或者弱作为,是宗教在农村颇具吸引力的一个重要原因.     

A test of the rational expectations hypothesis using data from a natural experiment

Data on contestants’ choices in Italian Game Show Affari Tuoi are analysed in a way that separates the effect of risk attitude (preferences) from that of beliefs concerning the amount of money that will be offered to contestants in future rounds. This separate identification is possible by virtue of the fact that, at a certain stage of the game, beliefs are not relevant, and risk attitude is the sole determinant of choice. The rational expectations hypothesis is tested by comparing the estimated belief function with the ‘true’ offer function which is estimated extraneously using data on offers actually made to contestants. We find a close correspondence, leading us to accept the rational expectations hypothesis. The importance of belief formation is confirmed by the estimation of a mixture model which establishes that the vast majority of contestants are forward looking as opposed to myopic.     

On relaxing the maximization postulate

We have agreed in behalf of the desirability of having a decision theory that includes nonoptimal decisions. Nonopti mal decisions are a basic cause of X-inefficiency in the production processes of firms, as well as in the economy as a whole. Therefore it is important to have a theory that allows us to examine the nature of, and use the possibility of suboptimal decision making.We suggested and examined briefly various decision procedures and behaviors which can yield suboptimal outcomes. These include faulty calculating procedures, which leave out steps from more careful calculating procedures; noncalculating responses, such as habits, conventions, rules of thumb, etc., non-responses as well as satisficing, and sacrificing types of behavior. The Yerkes-Dodson Law enables us to relate the likelihood that decisions will be optimal or suboptimal to the pressures felt by the decision maker. Up to a certain point pressure will increase the probability of optimal decisions, then will reduce it.Within the firm, in particular, there are certain behaviors which are likely to be suboptimal which are of special inter est. These are conventions, and other types of behaviors, that are constrained by peers or superiors. Conventions, in particular, are likely to prevent latent PD outcomes from occurring even though they are themselves suboptimal but Pareto superior to the PD outcome.Even though the idea of suboptimal decisions is not well accepted in economics, it is linguistically and logically consistent with the concept of maximizing behavior, and hence it is correct to allow for them in a more complete behavior postulate. The essential meanings of the words, “maximize,” “optimize,” and “choice” imqly that dissimilar options are available to the person doing the choosing. Furthermore “choice” implies that any options, optimal or suboptimal, are possible choices. Therefore, we argued that the logically correct interpretation of the maximization postulate must allow for the possibility of suboptimal choices along with optimal ones. We emphasize that we are not arguing against the possibil,ity of optimal choices being made. On the contrary, it seems likely that most decision sets will tend to be some mixture of optimal and suboptimal procedures.A major purpose of this paper has been to argue against the ideas that nonoptimal choices are unthinkable, misconceived or an unnecessary part of any decision postulate. To this end we attempted to identify several modes of argumentation in which the essential comparative meanings of “maximize,” and “choice” are commonly nullified. Such postulates were identified as, “whatever is chosen is optimal;” “preference is revealed by the choices made;” and “people maximize a function which can include the disutility of maximization.” Among the types of reasoning looked at critically were, that an apparent nonoptimal choice is really a misspecification of the objective function; and that a nonoptimal choice can be translated into an optimal one by adding another variable, or generalizing the time unit of utility. These circular reasonings amount to a denial of the comparative meaning of optimality when they are carried to the point where every assertion of nonoptimality is countered by arguments of this type. In general, we have argued that the possibility of nonoptimal choices and nonoptimal decision procedures cannot be denied.     

Monopolistic Screening with Boundedly Rational Consumers*

In this paper, I revisit the monopolistic screening problem with two types assuming that consumers are boundedly rational. Bounded rationality implies that the revelation principle does not apply and the choice of the selling mechanism entails a loss of generality. I show that if the monopolist restricts attention to the mechanisms that offer menus of two choices, the profits are lower than in the case of fully rational consumers by the term of order ln λ/λ, where λ is the degree of rationality of the consumers. The monopolist, however, can approximate the profits earned when consumers are fully rational by using a more elaborate message game.     

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.     

Conformity and the Demand for Environmental Goods

The existing literature on eco-labeling and green consumerism has been framed within a classical market context where price and quality are the drivers of consumer choice. However, it seems possible that consumers are also concerned about the choices made by other consumers. In fact, it is unclear that people’s consumption decisions are made independently of social context. For instance, under the desire to conform to certain social norms—or in the presence of status concerns—some individuals may be willing to pay a higher price premium for green products the more widespread green consumerism is in society. We test this hypothesis using a choice experiment where the respondents were asked to choose among coffee products varying with respect to their share of ecological beans, share of fair trade beans, and price. Three treatments were used, differing only in the information given about the choices made by other consumers. We find different responses to the treatments across individuals and we can only confirm our hypothesis of conformity for women, although men appear to have stronger preferences for ecological coffee than women have.     

The ABC mechanism: an incentive compatible payoff mechanism for elicitation of outcome and probability transformations

When it comes to experiments with multiple-round decisions under risk, the current payoff mechanisms are incentive compatible with either outcome weighting theories or probability weighting theories, but not both. In this paper, I introduce a new payoff mechanism, the Accumulative Best Choice (“ABC”) mechanism that is incentive compatible for all rational risk preferences. I also identify three necessary and sufficient conditions for a payoff mechanism to be incentive compatible for all models of decision under risk with complete and transitive preferences. I show that ABC is the unique incentive compatible mechanism for rational risk preferences in a multiple-task setting. In addition, I test empirical validity of the ABC mechanism in the lab. The results from both a choice pattern experiment and a preference (structural) estimation experiment show that individual choices under the ABC mechanism are statistically not different from those observed with the one-round task experimental design. The ABC mechanism supports unbiased elicitation of both outcome and probability transformations as well as testing alternative decision models that do or do not include the independence axiom.

     

Was Bentham a primitive rational choice theory predecessor?

This paper challenges the view of Jeremy Bentham as a primitive predecessor of rational choice theory and welfare economics. The psychological hedonism in Bentham is of a rather weak form – net pleasure motivates behaviour, but we are not always capable of its maximisation. Thus, the outcome of our choices is not necessarily in our best interest and the aggregation of our revealed preferences is not necessarily a good indicator of general happiness. The bottom line is that the underpinnings of Bentham's utilitarianism are better aligned with contemporary psychological theory than previously thought, which puts his ethical thinking on firmer ground.     

The market for preferences

Learning processes are widely held to be the mechanism by whichboundedly rational agents adapt to environmental changes. Weargue that this same outcome might also be achieved by a differentmechanism, namely specialisation and the division of knowledge,which we here extend to the consumer side of the economy. Wedistinguish between high-level preferences and low-level preferencesas nested systems of rules used to solve particular choice problems.We argue that agents, while sovereign in high-level preferences,may often find it expedient to acquire, in a pseudo-market,the low-level preferences in order to make good choices whenpurchasing complex commodities about which they have littleor no experience. A market for preferences arises when environmentalcomplexity overwhelms learning possibilities and leads agentsto make use of other people's specialised knowledge and decisionrules.