Misconceptions and Game Form Recognition: Challenges to Theories of Revealed Preference and Framing

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cason, Timothy N.; Plott, Charles R.
• 署名单位: Purdue University System; Purdue University; California Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/677254
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 1235-1270
• 关键词: reference-dependent preferences; subject misconceptions; ELICITING VALUATIONS; pay-willingness; accept gap; laboratory experiments; contingent valuation; auctions; RISK; decisions

摘要

This study explores the tension between the standard economic theory of preference and nonstandard theories of preference that are motivated by an underlying theory of framing. A simple experiment fails to measure a known preference. The divergence of the measured preference from the known preference reflects a mistake, arising from some subjects' misconception of the game form. We conclude that choice data should not be granted an unqualified interpretation of preference revelation. Mistakes in choices obscured by a possible error at the foundation of the theory of framing can masquerade as having been produced by nonstandard preferences.