 Temptation–Driven PreferencesEddie Dekel, Barton Lipman () and Aldo Rustichini No WP2006-024, Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics Abstract: “My own behavior baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe.” Saint Paul What behavior can be explained using the hypothesis that the agent faces temptation but is otherwise a “standard rational agent”? In earlier work, Gul–Pesendorfer [2001] use a set betweenness axiom to restrict the set of preferences considered by Dekel, Lipman, and Rustichini [2001] to those explainable via temptation. We argue that set betweenness rules out plausible and interesting forms of temptation. We propose a pair of alternative axioms called DFC, desire for commitment, and AIC, approximate improvements are chosen. DFC characterizes temptation as situations where given any set of alternatives, the agent prefers committing herself to some particular item from the set rather than leaving herself the flexibility of choosing later. AIC says that if adding an option to a menu improves the menu, it is because that option is chosen under some circumstances. We show that these axioms characterize a natural generalization of the Gul–Pesendorfer representation. Pages: 31pages Forthcoming, Review of Economic Studies There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2006-024 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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