Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-hpxsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-14T17:08:47.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

REASON-BASED CHOICE AND CONTEXT-DEPENDENCE: AN EXPLANATORY FRAMEWORK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2016

Franz Dietrich  and
Christian List
Franz Dietrich
Affiliation:
Paris School of Economics & CNRS, CES-Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economiques, 106-112 Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75647 Paris cedex 13, France; URL: .
Christian List
Affiliation:
Paris School of Economics & CNRS, CES-Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economiques, 106-112 Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75647 Paris cedex 13, France; URL: .
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

We introduce a ‘reason-based’ framework for explaining and predicting individual choices. The key idea is that a decision-maker focuses on some but not all properties of the options and chooses an option whose ‘motivationally salient’ properties he/she most prefers. Reason-based explanations can capture two kinds of context-dependent choice: (i) the motivationally salient properties may vary across choice contexts, and (ii) they may include ‘context-related’ properties, not just ‘intrinsic’ properties of the options. Our framework allows us to explain boundedly rational and sophisticated choice behaviour. Since properties can be recombined in new ways, it also offers resources for predicting choices in unobserved contexts.

Keywords

Rational choicereasonscontext-dependencebounded and sophisticated rationalityprediction of choice
Type
Symposium on Rational Choice and Philosophy
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 175 - 229
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bermudez, J. L. 2009. Decision Theory and Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernheim, B. D. and Rangel, A.. 2009. Beyond revealed preference: choice-theoretic foundations for behavioral welfare economics. Quarterly Journal of Economics 124: 51–104.Google Scholar
Bhattacharyya, A., Pattanaik, P. K. and Xu, Y.. 2011. Choice, internal consistency and rationality. Economics and Philosophy 27: 123–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blow, L., Browning, M. and Crawford, I.. 2008. Revealed preference analysis of characteristics models. Review of Economic Studies 75: 371–389.Google Scholar
Blundell, R. 2005. How revealing is revealed preference? Journal of the European Economic Association 3: 211–235.Google Scholar
Bossert, W. and Suzumura, K.. 2009. External norms and rationality of choice. Economics and Philosophy 25: 139–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bossert, W. and Suzumura, K.. 2010. Consistency, Choice, and Rationality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C. F., Loewenstein, G. and Rabin, M., eds. 2004. Advances in Behavioral Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherepanov, V., Feddersen, T. and Sandroni, A.. 2013. Rationalization. Theoretical Economics 8: 775–800.Google Scholar
de Clippel, G. and Eliaz, K.. 2012. Reason-based choice: a bargaining rationale for the attraction and compromise effects. Theoretical Economics 7: 125–162.Google Scholar
de Jongh, D. and Liu, F.. 2009. Preference, priorities and belief. In Preference Change: Approaches from Philosophy, Economics and Psychology, ed. Grüne-Yanoff, T. and Hansson, S. O., 85–108. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Dietrich, F. and List, C.. 2011. A model of non-informational preference change. Journal of Theoretical Politics 23: 145–164.Google Scholar
Dietrich, F. and List, C.. 2013a. A reason-based theory of rational choice. Noûs 47: 104–134.Google Scholar
Dietrich, F. and List, C.. 2013b. Where do preferences come from? International Journal of Game Theory 42: 613–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, F. and List, C.. 2016. Mentalism versus behaviourism in economics: a philosophy-of-science perspective. Economics and Philosophy 32. doi: 10.1017/S0266267115000462.Google Scholar
Gaertner, W. and Xu, Y.. 2004. Procedural choice. Economic Theory 24: 335–349.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M. and the ABC Research Group. 2000. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gold, N. and List, C.. 2004. Framing as path dependence. Economics and Philosophy 20: 253–277.Google Scholar
Gorman, W. M. 1980. A possible procedure for analysing quality differentials in the egg market. Review of Economic Studies 47: 843–856.Google Scholar
Huber, J., Payne, J. W. and Puto, C.. 1982. Adding asymmetrically dominated alternatives: violations of regularity and the similarity hypothesis. Journal of Consumer Research 9: 90–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalai, G., Rubinstein, A. and Spiegler, R.. 2002. Rationalizing choice functions by multiple rationales. Econometrica 70: 2481–2488.Google Scholar
Köszegi, B. and Rabin, M.. 2006. A model of reference-dependent preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics 121: 1133–1165.Google Scholar
Lancaster, K. J. 1966. A new approach to consumer theory. Journal of Political Economy 74: 132–157.Google Scholar
Lenman, J. 2011. Reasons for action: justification vs. explanation. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), ed. Zalta, E. N.. URL: <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/reasons-just-vs-expl/>.Google Scholar
Liu, F. 2010. Von Wright's ‘The Logic of Preference’ revisited. Synthese 175: 69–88.Google Scholar
Mandler, M., Manzini, P. and Mariotti, M.. 2012. A million answers to twenty questions: choosing by checklist. Journal of Economic Theory 147: 71–92.Google Scholar
Manzini, P. and Mariotti, M.. 2007. Sequentially rationalizable choice. American Economic Review 97: 1824–1839.Google Scholar
Manzini, P. and Mariotti, M.. 2012. Moody choice. Working paper, University of St Andrews.Google Scholar
Masatlioglu, Y., Nakajima, D. and Ozbay, E. Y.. 2012. Revealed attention. American Economic Review 102: 2183–2205.Google Scholar
Osherson, D. and Weinstein, S.. 2012. Preference based on reasons. Review of Symbolic Logic 5: 122–147.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 1991. Decision theory and folk psychology. In Foundations of Decision Theory, ed. Bacharach, M. and Hurley, S., 147–175. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Richter, M. 1971. Rational choice. In Preferences, Utility, and Demand, ed. Chipman, J. S.et al., 29–58. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, A. 2006. Lecture Notes in Microeconomic Theory: The Economic Agent. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Salant, Y. and Rubinstein, A.. 2008. (A, f): choice with frames. Review of Economic Studies 75: 1287–1296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P. 1948. Consumption theory in terms of revealed preferences. Economica 15: 243–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1993. Internal consistency of choice. Econometrica 61: 495–521.Google Scholar
Shafir, E., Simonson, I. and Tversky, A.. 1993. Reason-based choice. Cognition 49: 11–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simonson, I. 1989. Choice based on reasons: the case of attraction and compromise effects. Journal of Consumer Research 16: 158–174.Google Scholar
Suzumura, K. and Xu, Y.. 2001. Characterizations of consequentialism and nonconsequentialism. Journal of Economic Theory 101: 423–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. R.. 2008. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.. 1981. The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science 211: 453–458.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.. 1991. Loss aversion in riskless choice: a reference-dependent model. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106: 1039–1061.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Simonson, I.. 1993. Context-dependent preferences. Management Science 39: 1179–1189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varian, H. 2006. Revealed preference. In Samuelsonian Economics and the Twenty-First Century, ed. Szenberg, M., Ramrattan, L. and Gottesman, A. A., 99–115. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
von Wright, G. H. 1963. The Logic of Preference. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar