On the Sufficiency of Transitive Preferences

Abstract

The assumption that preferences are transitive, or, roughly equivalently, that choice behavior satisfies the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference, is at the core of much classical normative decision theory. This paper asks to what degree this restricts the possible outcomes of choice behavior: are there objectives that could not be attained by an agent adhering to WARP that could be attained by choices that would be said to be "intransitive"? It is argued that the answer to this question is "no" in one setting of choice under random budget sets any outcome obtained by intransitive choice methods can also be obtained by transitive ones.

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