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Who Is (More) Rational?
Open accessAbstract
Revealed preference theory offers a criterion for decision-making quality: if decisions are high quality then there exists a utility function the choices maximize. We conduct a large-scale experiment to test for consistency with utility maximization. Consistency scores vary markedly within and across socioeconomic groups. In particular, consistency is strongly related to wealth: A standard deviation increase in consistency is associated with 15–19 percent more household wealth. This association is quantitatively robust to conditioning on correlates of unobserved constraints, preferences, and beliefs. Consistency with utility maximization under laboratory conditions thus captures decision-making ability that applies across domains and influences important real-world outcomes. (JEL D12, D14, D81, D83, D91, G11)
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“These are in contrast to results of our human experiment (SI Appendix, Tables S5 and S6) and prior studies where rationality score and preference have been shown to differ across demographic groups (22, 28, 61).”
From The emergence of economic rationality of GPT (2023) · cites this paper as [22]
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Research works printed but not linked: 3
- 10.2307/3312889 · DOI
- Choi Syngjoo, 2014, American Economic Review. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer., 104, 1518, 10.1257/aer.104.6.1518 · DOI
- 10.1162/qjec.121.4.1133 · DOI · Paper page
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Metadata
- Authors
- Choi, S., Kariv, S., Müller, W., & Silverman, D.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- University of Vienna (AT)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Venue
- American Economic Review
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2014-06-01
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1518-1550
- ISSN
- 0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1601160662
- Cited by
- 277
- References
- 87
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 18
- FWCI
- 5.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Economic Review (publishedVersion)
- National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
- Research portal (Tilburg University) (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Seoul National University Open Repository (Seoul National University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Universiteit van Tilburg
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic and Environmental Valuation
- Keywords
- revealed preference, utility maximization, decision consistency, rationality, socioeconomic heterogeneity, income, gender differences, age, wealth, personality, risk tolerance, field experiments
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