Previous studies suggest that two otherwise robust 'anomalies' – preference reversals and disparities between buying and selling valuations – are eroded when respondents participate in repeated markets. We report an experiment which investigates whether this is true when factors...

Plott and Zeiler (2005) report that the willingness-to-pay/willingness-to-accept disparity is absent for mugs in a particular experimental setting, designed to neutralize misconceptions about the procedures used to elicit valuations. This result has received sustained attention in the...

This paper defines and analyses the concept of a 'ranking problem'. In a ranking problem, a set of objects, each of which possesses some common property P to some degree, are ranked by P-ness. I argue that every eligible answer to a ranking problem can be expressed as a complete and transitive...

We propose a new type of cooperative game - a game in transition function (TF) form - as a means of representing social decision making procedures that is suitable for the analysis of rights. The TF form is a generalisation of the effectivity function (EF) form, and in particular it tells us...

This paper presents a new iterative procedure for solving finite noncooperative games, the reasoning-based expected utility procedure (RBEU), and compares this with existing iterative procedures. RBEU deletes more strategies than iterated deletion of strictly dominated strategies, while avoiding...

The game-theoretic assumption of 'common knowledge of rationality' leads to paradoxes when rationality is represented in a Bayesian framework as cautious expected utility maximisation with independent beliefs (ICEU). We diagnose and resolve these paradoxes by presenting a new class of formal...

We investigate the methodology used in a significant genre of experimental economics, in which experiments are designed to test theoretical models by implementing them in the laboratory. Using two case studies, we argue that such an experiment is a test, not of what the model says about its...

Standard economic analysis assumes that preferences are independent of markets. However, there is evidence suggesting that price information can influence preferences. We investigate the hypothesis that markets do not simply allow agents to reveal their preferences, but actually help to shape...

This paper proposes a conception of mutual advantage as a motivation for cooperative behaviour. This motivation is contrasted with the 'emotional' reciprocity that is represented in current theories of social preferences. The paper explores parallels between mutual advantage and Humean analyses...

We offer an evolutionary model of the emergence of concepts of salience through similarity-based learning. When an individual faces a new decision problem, she chooses an action that she perceives as similar to actions that, when chosen in similar previous problems, led to favourable outcomes....