Reason-Based Rationalization

Franz Dietrich and Christian List

STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series from Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE

Abstract: "Reason-based rationalizations" explain an agent's choices by specifying which properties of the options or choice context he/she cares about (the "motivationally salient properties") and how he/she cares about these properties the "fundamental preference relation"). We characterize the choice-behavioural implications of reason-based rationalizability and identify two kinds of context-dependent motivation in a reason-based agent: he/she may (i) care about different properties in different contexts and (ii) care not only about properties of the options, but also about properties relating to the context. Reason-based rationalizations can explain non-classical choice behaviour, including boundedly rational and sophisticated rational behaviour, and predict choices in unobserved contexts, an issue neglected in standard choice theory.

JEL-codes: D01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
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https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/te/te565.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Reason-Based Rationalization (2013)
Working Paper: Reason-Based Rationalization (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:stitep:565

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