This paper examines the different ways that economists have characterized the empirical content of modern consumer choice theory. There has been general agreement among economists that each stage in the development of the theory – from early neoclassical, to ordinal utility, and on to revealed...

This paper uses the 2016 book by Chambers and Echenique as the focal point for a general discussion of the revealed preference literature: starting with Samuelson (1938) but with a particular emphasis on its relationship to general equilibrium theory and recent empirical applications. The main...

The paper argues that much of the theoretical work on consumer choice theory during the first third of the twentieth century actually addressed some of the same issues discussed in contemporary behavioral economics. This is not generally recognized because the discussion was tied up with the...

This paper examines methodological issues raised by revealed preference theory in economics: particularly contemporary revealed preference theory. The paper has three goals. First, to make the case that revealed preference theory is a broad research program in choice theory – not a single...

Recent histories of 20th century economics have emphasized the transformation of demand theory that occurred during the period between early neoclassicism and Arrow-Debreu. This paper examines three contributions to this recent literature - Amadae (2003), Davis (2003), and Giocoli (2003) - and...