This paper studies collective decision making in the context of a project selection model. We derive the optimal decision architecture when marginal decision costs are present, and investigate the circumstances under which the hierarchy and polyarchy exist as optimal sequential architectures. Our analysis extends previous results on optimal committee decision-making to a sequential setting, and...

Jamal and Sunder (1996) showed that the median prices in double auctions populated by zero-intelligence (ZI) traders whose trading limits are set by two biased heuristics tend to converge to the same equilibrium as if their trading limits were set by applying Bayes’ Rule. This note provides an analytical explanation of why the repeated use of biased heuristics approximates Bayes rule. JEL class...

We develop a behavioral axiomatic characterization of exponentially discounted utility (EDU) over consumption streams. Given is an individual agent’s behavior in the market: assume a finite collection of purchases across periods. We show that such behavior satisfies a “revealed preference axiom” if and only if there exists a EDU model (a discount rate per period and a concave utility function o...

This paper shows that in a buffer stock saving model, wealth-to-income and other interesting variables have unique stable invariant distributions. Previously this ergodic property has only been conjectured and demonstrated numerically by means of simulations. The proof proceeds by extending earlier results about the existence and uniqueness of an ergodic distribution to Markov processes on non-...

A common precept of decision analysis under uncertainty is the choice of an action which maximizes the expected value of a utility function. Savage’s (1954) axioms for subjective expected utility provide a normative foundation for this principle of choice. This paper shows that the same set of axioms implies that one should select an action which maximizes the probability of meeting an uncertai...

We develop a version of Afriat’s Theorem that is applicable to a variety of choice environments, beyond the setting of classical consumer theory. This allows us to devise tests for rationalizability in the context of choice data on lotteries, contingent consumption, and intertemporal consumption. We also establish a version of Richter’s Theorem that characterizes the strict rationalizability of...

The concept of linear risk tolerance is transferred from the expected utility framework to the two-parameter, mean-variance approach. We show how the requirement of a hyperbolical Arrow-Pratt index translates from the EU-approach into a condition on the marginal rate of substitution between return and risk in the two-parameter approach. As a spin-off from this translation, we derive a specific ...

This paper uses player/match level data drawn from five playing seasons of the English Premiership League (EPL) to test for the presence of a refereeing susceptibility to social pressure in the application of soccer’s commonest sanction, the yellow disciplinary card. Using both player-specific fixed and random effects models, tentative support for the proposition is uncovered. The estimated eff...

This paper provides preference foundations for parametric weighting functions under rank-dependent utility. This is achieved by decomposing the independence axiom of expected utility into separate meaningful properties. These conditions allow us to characterize rank-dependent utility with power and exponential weighting functions. Moreover, by allowing probabilistic risk attitudes to vary withi...

When making choices, decision makers often either lack information about alternatives or lack the cognitive capacity to analyze every alternative. To capture these situations, we formulate a framework to study behavioral search by utilizing the idea of consideration sets. Consumers engage in a dynamic search process. At each stage, they consider only those options in the current consideration s...