Consumer legislation such as laws against fraud, uniform standards and mandatory disclosure are imposed on market participants in order to ensure fair trade. One argument behind this legislation is that consumers are boundedly rational. I check the validity of this argument for spatially...

Rubinstein and Wolinsky (1990) show that a simple homogeneous market with exogenous matching has continuum of (non-competitive) perfect equilibria, but the unique Markov perfect equilibrium is competitive. By contrast, in the more general case of heterogeneous markets, we show there exists a...

This paper considers the use of neural networks to model bounded rational behaviour. The underlying theory and use of neural networks is now a component of various forms of scientific enquiry, be it modelling artificial intelligence, developing better pattern recognition or solving complex...

We analyze a symmetric n-firm Cournot oligopoly with a heterogeneous population of optimizers and imitators. Imitators mimic the output decision of the most successful firms of the previous round a l`a Vega-Redondo (1997). Optimizers play a myopic best response to the opponents’ previous...

In standard market theory demand and cost functions have to be known to compute optimal price or quantity responses. In case of risk or uncertainty the decisions depend on expectations, i.e. estimated parameters. Even in case of rational inference these expectations itself are uncertain, at...

Empirical studies show that decisions deviate from the predictions of expected utility theory and violate the axiomatic foundations. Hence, many generalizations to non-expected utility theory have been developped. But empirically they did not provide an improvement over the standard approach. In...

The demonstration by Smith [1962] that prices and allocations quickly converge to the competitive equilibrium in the continuous double auction (CDA) was one of the first – and remains one of the most important results in experimental economics. His initial experiment, subsequent market...

This paper advances the claim that ignoring relevant information is sometimes consistent with good decision making. Although that finding is not new, the argument presented here is. In contrast with bounded rationality models, the decision-making model in this paper presupposes no cognitive...