Rationally Inattentive Behavior: Characterizing and Generalizing Shannon Entropy

Andrew Caplin, Mark Dean and John Leahy

No 23652, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We provide a full behavioral characterization of the standard Shannon model of rational inattention. The key axiom is "Invariance under Compression", which identifies this model as capturing an ideal form of attention-constrained choice. We introduce tractable generalizations that allow for many of the known behavioral violations from this ideal, including asymmetries and complementarities in learning, context effects, and low responsiveness to incentives. We provide an even more general method of recovering attention costs from behavioral data. The data set in which we characterize all behavioral patterns is "state dependent" stochastic choice data.

JEL-codes: D8 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-upt
Note: EFG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (51)

Published as Andrew Caplin & Mark Dean & John Leahy, 2022. "Rationally Inattentive Behavior: Characterizing and Generalizing Shannon Entropy," Journal of Political Economy, vol 130(6), pages 1676-1715.

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