Who Is (More) Rational?

Revealed preference theory offers a criterion for decision-making quality: if decisions are high quality then there exists a utility function that the choices maximize. We conduct a large-scale field experiment that enables us to test for consistency with utility maximization. We find that high-income and high-education subjects display greater levels of consistency than low-income and low-education subjects, men are more consistent than women, and young subjects are more consistent than older subjects. We also find that consistency with utility maximization is strongly related to wealth: a standard deviation increase in standard consistency scores is associated with 15-19 percent more wealth. JEL Classification Numbers: C93, D01, D03, D12, D81