Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period

Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions over 160 Years: Voter Behavior and Increasing Complexity in Decision-Making

Using a quasi-natural voting experiment encompassing a 160-year period (1848-2009) in Switzerland, we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on trusted parliamentary representatives. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer to parliamentary recommendations when making their decisions. This finding hold...

Satisfaction and adaptation in voting behavior: an empirical exploration

Dynamic models of learning and adaptation have provided realistic predictions in terms of voting behavior. This study aims at contributing to their scant empirical verification. We develop a learning algorithm based on bounded rationality estimating the pattern of learning process through a two-stage econometric model. The analysis links voting behavior to past choices and economic satisfaction...

Validating Models for Bounded Rationality and Decision Biases in a Newsvendor Experiment

A number of experimental newsvendor studies have shown that human subjects make decisions which coincide with a “pull-to-center” effect. In general, three behavioral theories have been proposed in the literature to explain this behavior: bounded rationality, mean anchoring, and minimizing ex post inventory regret. Unfortunately, these models generate similar predictions under symmetric demand d...

Thin Rationality and Representation of Preferences with Implications to Spatial Voting Models

Mechanisms for Decisions about the Future

Evolutionary and psychological perspectives on decision making remain largely separate endeavors. The bounded rationality approach integrates these two perspectives by focusing on simple, plausible mechanisms of decision making and the cognitive capacities needed to implement these mechanisms. Decisions about the future provide a class of decisions that lend themselves to a bounded rationality ...