Journal ArticleDOI
Experimental studies of consumer demand behavior using laboratory animals
John H. Kagel,Raymond C. Battalio,Howard Rachlin,Leonard Green,Robert L. Basmann,William R. Klemm +5 more
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In this article, a series of experimental studies of consumer demand behavior were conducted using laboratory animals as subjects, showing that laboratory animals will change consumption patterns in response to changes in the budget set, consuming more of the lower priced commodities and less of the higher priced commodities.Abstract:
Using laboratory animals as subjects, two series of experimental studies of consumer demand behavior are reported. The experiments show that laboratory animals will change consumption patterns in response to changes in the budget set, consuming more of the lower priced commodities and less of the higher priced commodities. Large rotations in the budget line for essential commodities resulted in severe disruption of consumer behavior. The experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using non-human subjects in laboratory studies of economic behavior.read more
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Toward a positive theory of consumer choice
TL;DR: The economic theory of the consumer is a combination of positive and normative theories as discussed by the authors, which describes how consumers should choose, but it is also described how they do choose, and in certain well-defined situations many consumers act in a manner that is inconsistent with economic theory.
Book ChapterDOI
Economic Theory of Choice and the Preference Reversal Phenomenon
TL;DR: This article reported the results of a series of experiments designed to discredit the psychologists' works as applied to economics and suggested that no optimization principles of any sort lie behind even the simplest of human choices and that the uniformities in human choices may result from principles which are of a completely different sort from those that are commonly accepted.
Journal ArticleDOI
How Basic Are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior
TL;DR: This paper showed that capuchin monkeys react rationally to both price and wealth shocks but display several hallmark biases when faced with gambles, including reference dependence and loss aversion, suggesting that loss aversion extends beyond humans and may be innate rather than learned.
Journal ArticleDOI
Utility maximization and melioration: Internalities in individual choice
TL;DR: The authors explored some of the variables that past work suggests may be relevant in choosing between alternatives in relatively simple settings and found that participants often disregarded the internalities and were instead guided by the current yields of the two alternatives, which is a frequently observed tendency, called "melioration" in experiments on choices by animals.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Commitment, choice and self-control
Howard Rachlin,Leonard Green +1 more
TL;DR: The preference for the large delayed alternative with long durations of T parallels everyday instances of advance commitment to a given course of action and may be seen as a prototype for self-control.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Economic Theory of Suicide
Daniel S. Hamermesh,Neal M. Soss +1 more
TL;DR: This article derived an economic theory of suicide and test its implications using: (1) data by age in many developed countries; (2) a time series, 1947-67, by age group in the United States; (3) a cross section by state and age groups in 1960.
Journal ArticleDOI
The ecological determinants of reinforcement in the rat
TL;DR: Any change in performance of the instrumental behavior ancillary to feeding which causes the values of these parameters to recover their optimum or privileged value, defined by their niche, will be strengthened.