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REASON-BASED CHOICE AND CONTEXT-DEPENDENCE: AN EXPLANATORY FRAMEWORK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2016

Franz Dietrich  and
Christian List
Franz Dietrich
Affiliation:
Paris School of Economics & CNRS, CES-Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economiques, 106-112 Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75647 Paris cedex 13, France; URL: .
Christian List
Affiliation:
Paris School of Economics & CNRS, CES-Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economiques, 106-112 Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75647 Paris cedex 13, France; URL: .
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Abstract:

We introduce a ‘reason-based’ framework for explaining and predicting individual choices. The key idea is that a decision-maker focuses on some but not all properties of the options and chooses an option whose ‘motivationally salient’ properties he/she most prefers. Reason-based explanations can capture two kinds of context-dependent choice: (i) the motivationally salient properties may vary across choice contexts, and (ii) they may include ‘context-related’ properties, not just ‘intrinsic’ properties of the options. Our framework allows us to explain boundedly rational and sophisticated choice behaviour. Since properties can be recombined in new ways, it also offers resources for predicting choices in unobserved contexts.

Keywords

Rational choicereasonscontext-dependencebounded and sophisticated rationalityprediction of choice
Type
Symposium on Rational Choice and Philosophy
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 175 - 229
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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