Social Decision Theory: Choosing within and between Groups
Fabio Maccheroni,
Massimo Marinacci and
Aldo Rustichini
The Review of Economic Studies, 2012, vol. 79, issue 4, 1591-1636
Abstract:
We study the behavioural foundation of interdependent preferences, where the outcomes of others affect the welfare of the decision maker. These preferences are taken as given, not derived from more primitive ones. Our aim is to establish an axiomatic foundation providing the link between observation of choices and a functional representation which is convenient, free of inconsistencies and can provide the basis for measurement. The dependence among preferences may take place in two conceptually different ways, expressing two different views of the nature of interdependent preferences. The first is Festinger's view that the evaluation of peers' outcomes is useful to improve individual choices by learning from the comparison. The second is Veblen's view that interdependent preferences keep track of social status derived from a social value attributed to the goods one consumes. Corresponding to these two different views, we have two different formulations. In the first, the decision maker values his outcomes and those of others on the basis of his own utility. In the second, he ranks outcomes according to a social value function. We give different axiomatic foundations to these two different, but complementary, views of the nature of the interdependence. On the basis of this axiomatic foundation, we build a behavioural theory of comparative statics within subjects and across subjects. We characterize preferences according to the relative importance assigned to gains and losses in social domain, that is pride and envy. This parallels the standard analysis of private gains and losses (as well as that of regret and relief). We give an axiomatic foundation of interpersonal comparison of preferences, ordering individuals according to their sensitivity to social ranking. These characterizations provide the behavioural foundation for applied analysis of market and game equilibria with interdependent preferences. Copyright , Oxford University Press.
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rds006 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
Working Paper: Social Decision Theory: Choosing within and between Groups (2008) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:79:y:2012:i:4:p:1591-1636
Access Statistics for this article
The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman
More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().