When Choices are Mistakes (Joint with John Rehbeck)
(Joint seminar with CESS)
Using a laboratory experiment, we identify whether decision makers consider it a mistake to violate canonical choice axioms. To do this, we incentivize subjects to report which of several axioms they want their decisions to satisfy. Then, subjects make lottery choices which might conflict with their stated axiom preferences. We give them the opportunity to re-evaluate their decisions when lotteries conflict with desired axioms. We find that a majority of individuals want to follow the canonical axioms and revise their lottery choices to be consistent with them. We interpret this to mean that many axiom violations we observed were mistakes.

Link to paper: kirbyknielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/kirby/Mistakes.pdf

Please sign up for meetings here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JCU5l6ELVTtTGnGAvCRudlRHwmLpizIevH_cXtX0lk0/edit#gid=0
Date: 9 March 2021, 16:00 (Tuesday, 8th week, Hilary 2021)
Venue: Held on Zoom
Speaker: Kirby Nielsen (California Institute of Technology)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Applied Microeconomics Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Melis Clark