Making sense of monkey business: Re-examining tests of animal rationality

Pawel Dziewulski, Roy Allen and John Rehbeck ()
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John Rehbeck: Ohio State University

Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: This paper re-examines research that studies economic rationality using experimental data generated by nonhuman animals (e.g. rats, pigeons, monkeys, etc.). The standard experimental methodology to elicit choices from nonhuman animals allows a researcher to test three types of economic rationality: standard deterministic utility maximization, average choice rationality, and random utility maximization. Most of the research has evaluated whether animals satisfy average choice rationality. We describe the difference between these models and check each type of rationality on capuchin monkey data from Chen et al. (2006). We reject standard deterministic utility maximization, but cannot reject either average choice rationality or random utility maximization. This paper is the first to provide a statistical test for average choice rationality.

Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-exp and nep-upt
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https://www.sussex.ac.uk/business-school/documents/wps-03-2021.pdf (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Making sense of monkey business: Re-examining tests of animal rationality (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sus:susewp:0321

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