 Sen’s criticism of revealed preference theory and its ‘neo-samuelsonian critique’: a methodological and theoretical assessmentPost-Print from HAL Abstract: This paper evaluates how Amartya Sen's critique of revealed preference theory (RPT) stands against the latter's contemporary, ‘neo-Samuelsonian' version. Neo- Samuelsonians have argued that Sen's arguments against RPT are innocuous, in particular once it is acknowledged that RPT does not assume away the existence of motivations or other latent psychological or cognitive processes. Sen's claims that preferences and choices need to be distinguished and that external factors need to be taken into account to analyze the act of choice then appear to be irrelevant. However, while it is true that contemporary revealed preference theory (CRPT) partially evades Sen's critique, I show that the latter is still relevant outside the restricted areas of consumer choice and market dynamics. In particular, Sen's views regarding the importance of incomplete preferences and the multiplicity of levels of agency can hardly be integrated into the framework of CRPT. This is a significant limit, given the imperialistic claims of some of the proponents of the latter. Keywords: Amartya Sen; revealed preference theory; neo-Samuelsonian economics; rationality; choice theory (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Economic Methodology, 2016, 23 (4), pp.349-373. ⟨10.1080/1350178X.2016.1218530⟩ 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:hal:journl:hal-02865622 DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2016.1218530 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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