Related papers: Convergence to Utility Maximization and the Indiff…
Cognitive endurance -- the ability to sustain performance on a cognitively-demanding task over time -- is thought to be a crucial productivity determinant. However, a lack of data on this variable has limited researchers' ability to…
We consider black-box global optimization of time-consuming-to-evaluate functions on behalf of a decision-maker (DM) whose preferences must be learned. Each feasible design is associated with a time-consuming-to-evaluate vector of…
We study hypothesis testing over a heterogeneous population of strategic agents with private information. Any single test applied uniformly across the population yields statistical error that is sub-optimal relative to the performance of an…
We extend well-known comparative results under expected utility to models of non-expected utility by providing novel conditions on local utility functions. We illustrate how our results parallel, and are distinct from, existing results for…
An experimenter seeks to learn a subject's preference relation. The experimenter produces pairs of alternatives. For each pair, the subject is asked to choose. We argue that, in general, large but finite data do not give close…
We consider the problem of learning from revealed preferences in an online setting. In our framework, each period a consumer buys an optimal bundle of goods from a merchant according to her (linear) utility function and current prices,…
Humans must flexibly arbitrate between exploring alternatives and exploiting learned strategies, yet they frequently exhibit maladaptive persistence by continuing to execute failing strategies despite accumulating negative evidence. Here we…
Extracting from shared resources requires making choices to balance personal profit and sustainability. We present the results of a behavioural experiment wherein we manipulate the default extraction from a finite resource. Participants…
We investigate inferring individual preferences and the contradiction of individual preferences with group preferences through direct measurement of the brain. We report an experiment where brain activity collected from 31 participants…
Experiments suggest that people fail to take into account interdependencies between their choices -- they do not broadly bracket. Researchers often instead assume that people narrowly bracket, but existing designs do not test it. We design…
Active inference (AIF) unifies exploration and exploitation by minimizing the Expected Free Energy (EFE), balancing epistemic value (information gain) and pragmatic value (task performance) through a curiosity coefficient. Yet it has been…
This paper presents the Sequential Rationality Hypothesis, which argues that consumers are better able to make utility-maximizing decisions when products appear in sequential pairwise comparisons rather than in simultaneous multi-option…
In this paper we consider multi-objective reinforcement learning where the objectives are balanced using preferences. In practice, the preferences are often given in an adversarial manner, e.g., customers can be picky in many applications.…
The random utility model (RUM, McFadden and Richter, 1990) has been the standard tool to describe the behavior of a population of decision makers. RUM assumes that decision makers behave as if they maximize a rational preference over a…
This paper is devoted to revealed preference theory and its applications to testing economic data for consistency with utility maximization hypothesis, construction of index numbers, and forecasting. The quantitative measures of…
This work introduces a novel framework for evaluating LLMs' capacity to balance instruction-following with critical reasoning when presented with multiple-choice questions containing no valid answers. Through systematic evaluation across…
Learning the preferences of a human improves the quality of the interaction with the human. The number of queries available to learn preferences maybe limited especially when interacting with a human, and so active learning is a must. One…
Economists modeled self-control problems in decisions of people with the time-inconsistence preferences model. They argued that the source of self-control problems could be uncertainty and temptation. This paper uses an experimental test…
We elicit incomplete preferences over monetary gambles with subjective uncertainty. Subjects rank gambles, and these rankings are used to estimate preferences; payments are based on estimated preferences. About 40\% of subjects express…
We provide sufficient conditions under which a utility function may be recovered from a finite choice experiment. Identification, as is commonly understood in decision theory, is not enough. We provide a general recoverability result that…