Reason-based choice correspondences

A reason-based choice correspondence rationalizes choice behaviour in terms of a two-stage choice procedure. Given a feasible set S, the individual eliminates from it all of the dominated alternatives according to her …xed (not necessarily complete) strict preference relation, in the …rst step. In the second step, …rst she constructs for each maximal alternative identi…ed in the …rst step its lower contour set (i.e., the set of alternatives which are dominated by it in S), and then she eliminates from the maximal set all of those alternatives so that the following justi…cation holds: there exists another maximal alternative whose lower contour set strictly contains that of another maximal alternative. This procedural model captures the basic idea behind the experimental …nding known as "attraction e¤ect". We study the rationalizability of reason-based choice correspondences axiomatically. We relate our choice-consistency conditions to standard consistency proprieties. Our characterization result o¤ers testable restrictions on this ‘choice anomaly’for large (but …nite) set of alternatives. J.E.L. codes: D0.