In this paper, we introduce the weak and the strong notions of partially honest agents (Dutta and Sen, 2012), and then study implementation by natural price-quantity mechanisms (Saijo et al., 1996, 1999) in pure exchange economies with three or more agents in which pure-consequentialistically...

This brief note rises doubts on the argument that nudging will help people to behave more rational in terms of their own preferences. This justification of soft paternalism overlooks some methodological problems of expected utility theory which are one of the roots of behavioral economics.

The paper puts forward a small but novel idea of how we can cut down the incidence of bribery. There are different kinds of bribes and what this paper is concerned with are bribes that people often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to. I shall call these ― “harassment...

As stated also in the title of the paper, the analysis proposed is contrary to normative microeconomics. Therefore, we do not intend to analyze the individuals, with the intent to show if they behave correctly or wrongly, economically speaking.Our intention is to follow the logic of the...

Using a unique dataset collected in 59 rural Gambian villages, we study how ethnic heterogeneity is related to the structure of four economic exchange networks: land, labor, inputs and credit. We find that different measures of village-level ethnic fragmentation are mostly uncorrelated with...

This paper proposes a model of individual choice that does not assume completeness of the decision maker's preferences. The model helps explain in a natural way, and within a unied framework of choice in the presence of preference-incomparable options, three distinct behavioural phenomena: the...

If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A is better than C, right? Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels say: No! Betterness is nontransitive, they claim. In this paper, I discuss the central type of argument advanced by Temkin and Rachels for this radical idea, and argue that, given this...

Backward induction is a cornerstone of modern game theory. Yet, laboratory experiments consistently show that subjects fail to properly backward induct. Whether these findings generalize to other, real-world settings remains an open question. This paper develops a simple model of sequential...

Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that...

The goal of this paper is to examine stability in preferences using the Stigler- Becker state-dependent framework. Using a randomized intervention that changes the opportunity sets of individuals we construct a unique panel data from an artefactual field experiment and evaluate whether the...