The paper to be presented at this conference (Dietrich and List 2013) sketches some basic ideas underlying a broader, ongoing decision-theoretic project. In that project, we aim to develop a new, general approach to decision theory which (i) improves upon standard decision theory in both its idealized, ‘rational’ and its more psychologically informed, ‘behavioural’variants (the former are assoc...

Behavioural social choice has been proposed as a social choice parallel to seminal developments in other decision sciences, such as behavioural decision theory, behavioural economics, behavioural finance and behavioural game theory. Behavioural paradigms compare how rational actors should make certain types of decisions with how real decision makers behave empirically. We highlight that importa...

We sometimes have to choose between options that are seemingly incomparable insofar as they seem be neither better than, worse nor equal each other. This often happens when the available quite different from one another. For instance, consider a choice prioritizing either criminal justice reform or healthcare public policy goal. Even after relevant details of goals and possible reforms filled i...

Two independent approaches have been used to analyze choices. A prominent notion is rationalizability: individuals choose maximizing binary relations. An alternative choices in terms of standards behavior with the von Neumann–Morgenstern (vNM)-stability. We introduce a new concept ( r - $r \mbox{-} $ stability) that turn extends stability and rationality. Our main result establishes every ratio...

There are several advantages to viewing ethics as rational choice in this broader sense. It provides a conceptual framework that allows you to analyze complex business decisions that involve multiple stakeholders (as nearly all do). It offers a style of argument that can appeal to all parties, since rational choice, by definition, considers all points of view. It provides a vocabulary with whic...

In rational choice theory, individuals are assumed always to choose the option that will provide them maximum utility. But actual choices must be based on subjective perceptions of the attributes of the available options, and the accuracy of these perceptions will always be limited by the information-processing capacity of one’s nervous system. In recent work (Woodford 2011), I propose a theory...

PHD THESIS SUMMARY: Rationality and institutions: an inquiry into the normative implications of rational choice theory. In my dissertation, I aim to analyze what a desirable basic institutional structure looks like from the perspective of rational choice theory. While the main topic is thus normative in nature, I start by clarifying in the first part what the notion of rationality exactly entai...