Rational preference and rationalizable choice

• Published in: Economic theory Vol. 69; no. 1; pp. 61 - 105
• Main Authors: Cerreia-Vioglio, Simone, Giarlotta, Alfio, Greco, Salvatore, Maccheroni, Fabio, Marinacci, Massimo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer 01.02.2020; Springer Berlin Heidelberg; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Analysis; Behavior; Bias; Decision analysis; Decision-making; Economic theory; Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods; Economics; Economics and Finance; Frame analysis; Game Theory; Microeconomics; Preferences; Public Finance; Research Article; Social and Behav. Sciences; Behavioral preferences; D81; Robust ordinal regression; Mental preferences
• ISSN: 0938-2259; 1432-0479
• DOI: 10.1007/s00199-018-1157-1

We study a decision maker characterized by two binary relations. The first reflects his judgments about well-being, his mental preferences. The second describes the decision maker's choice behavior, his behavioral preferences. We propose axioms that describe a relation between these two preferences, so between mind and behavior, thus disentangling two different perspectives on preferences: a description of tastes (and attitudes) and a way to organize behavioral data. We obtain two representations: one in which mental preferences uniquely determine choice behavior, another for which mental preferences direct behavior but room remains for biases and framing effects. Our results also provide a foundation for a decision analysis procedure called robust ordinal regression and proposed by Greco et al.