Sequentially Rationalizable Choice

Cyclical choice is persistently observed in experimental evidence. It typically occurs in simple decision problems (involving only binary comparisons and few alternatives) and in significant proportions, sometimes nearing or even exceeding 50 percent. This is obviously incompatible with the classical model of ratio­ nal choice, in which choice is constructed as the maximizer of a single preference relation (which we call a rationale), or of a utility function. If a decision maker exhibits cycles of choice over some set of alternatives, for any candidate “best” alternative there is always another one in the set that is judged better still: it is not possible to express a decision maker’s preferences by a utility function, since it is not possible to find