經濟學系講座: Consumer Theory for the Badly Behaved
講者：Joshua LANIER教授/新加坡南洋理工大學社會科學學院助理教授
日期：11/3/2026 (四)
時間：14:00-15:15
地點：E21B-G002
語言：英語
內容：We introduce a new method suitable for analyzing consumers who do not satisfy traditional revealed preference axioms. We show that to every dataset of consumer behavior there exists a utility function which not only explains the data but is also better-behaved (in some appropriately defined sense) than every other utility function which also explains the data. We show how these “best-behaved” utility functions can be used to make statements about consumer well-being and to make demand predictions. We also provide a method to quantify the degree to which the consumer fails to act as a well-behaved utility maximizer. The advantage of our approach is (i) it can be used even when the consumer does not act according to revealed preference axioms, (ii) it agrees with the traditional approach to consumer theory when the consumer does satisfy these axioms, and (iii) all of our methods are easy to implement in practice.：//
