Humans are engineered neurologically to make rational and irrational choices. This paper introduces a new paradigm for decision making – a composite choice model – in which economic agents are constantly weighing rationality versus irrationality when encountering options. In an exploratory,...

We test the effectiveness of self-help peer groups as a commitment device for precautionary savings, through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microentrepreneurs in Chile. The first experiment finds that self-help peer groups are a powerful tool to increase savings (the number of...

Some 150 years ago Hermann Heinrich Gossen passed away. Who was this author after whom one of the prizes of the Verein of Socialpolitik is named? The paper provides a critical summary account of Gossen’s work. Gossen was convinced that he had discovered the only faithful interpretation of the...

We define a bargaining set for finite economies using Aubin’s veto mechanism and show its coincidence with the set of Walrasian allocations. Then, we rewrite our notion in terms of replicated economies showing that, in contrast with Anderson, Trockel and Zhou’s (1997) non-convergence result,...

We analyze bargaining mechanisms for allocating resources in atomless econo- mies. We provide results proving that it is not necessary to consider the forma- tion of all coalitions in order to obtain the bargaining sets. This is shown under restrictions of different nature, triggering different...

In most of the Intermediate Microeconomics or Microeconomic Theory texts, when the demand of individuals subject is analyzed, especially the Price-Consumption paths and Income-Expansion paths , Examples are presented in which the utility functions correspond to regular preferences, that is, the...

Neoclassical economic theory rules out systematic errors in consumption choice. According to the basic view, individuals know what they choose. They are able to predict how much utility an activity or a good produces for them now and in the future and they can maximize their utility. This...

This paper studies economic equilibrium theory with a 'uniformity principle' constraining the magnitudes (prices, quantities, etc.) and the operations (to perceive, evaluate, choose, communicate, etc.) that agents can use.We look at the special case of computability constraints, where all price...

Este artículo presenta la metodología y los resultados más relevantes de un estudio sobre la estimación de escalas de equivalencia en consumo. En ese estudio se destaca el uso de un método novedoso, propuesto por Lewbel y utilizado por Perali, para obtener los precios que se utilizan para...