London Business School · Regent’s Park · London NW1 4SA · UK · [email protected] January 3, 2012. Abstract. I consider a two-candidate election in which there is aggregate uncertainty about the popularity of each candidate, where voting is costly, and where participants are instrumentally motivated. The unique equilibrium predicts substantial turnout under reasonable conditions, and greater tur...

Few methodological issues are more stubborn than the status of rational choice theory (henceforth, RCT): the debates surrounding it are approximately five decades old with no end in sight. Fifty years are a long time not only in the life of any human being but also in the progress of a discipline so it is remarkable that the discussion is not closer to a conclusion now than what it was at its i...

We present a constructive algebraic integration theory. The theory is constructive in the sense of Bishop, however we avoid the axiom of countable, or dependent, choice. Thus our results can be interpreted in any topos. Since we avoid impredicative methods the results may also be interpreted in Martin-L type theory or in a predicative topos in the sense of Moerdijk and Palmgren. We outline how ...

A Salience Theory of Choice Errors We study a psychologically based foundation for choice errors. The decision maker applies a preference ranking after forming a ‘consideration set’ prior to choosing an alternative. Membership of the consideration set is determined both by the alternative specific salience and by the rationality of the agent (his general propensity to consider all alternatives)...

We derive the optimal portfolio choice for an investor who behaves according to Cumulative Prospect Theory. The study is done in a oneperiod economy with one risk-free asset and one risky asset, and the reference point corresponds to the terminal wealth arising when the entire initial wealth is invested into the risk-free asset. When it exists, the optimal holding is a function of a generalized...

Among schools of thought in comparative research, Rational Choice Theory (RCT) is both the most systematic and the most contested. RCT lacks a “classical” foundation but offfers a clear internal theory structure. The rationality assumption contains an unquestioned heuristic aspect, although the determinants of choice (especially preferences) lack a universally accepted solution. The choice aspe...

This paper provides a link between car following theory and the economic theory of road congestion by means of a theory of speed choice. According to this theory speed choice is based on a trade-off between the benefits (shorter travel time) and cost (higher accident risk) of driving faster. Accident risk is related to the distance to the ‘leader’ and by elaborating this relationship a number o...

One problem of interest in child language study has been specifying what features of the speech situation determine what children will say. Several cognitively based approaches to child language development have proposed principles of 'informativeness' to explain the child's choice of word(s). These principles predict that the child will choose the 'most informative' element of a situation and ...