Choice models
Contrary to common sentiments of `social science', I primarily value social theory for its rhetoric, and the potential for profundity to arise from abstraction. This admiration for social theory developed while studying mainstream economic models of mathematical decision-making (rationality, sophisticated probabilistic beliefs, equilibrium, etc.), but over time I gravitated toward boundedly rational models, as can be seen in the papers found below. Despite these days finding myself far more focused on pedagogy and interdisciplinary studies, these technical chapters of my dissertation still bring me some pride and joy.
Seemingly Rational Choice
I propose a model of decision-making (seemingly rational choice) that reinterprets observationally rational choices as potentially welfare-suboptimal. In particular, I highlight how observed choices can only be assumed to reveal experience within the total set of observed chosen alternatives, but likewise cannot reveal any decision-makers’ experiences with unchosen ones. I consider this experiential predicament to be a reinterpretation of rationalizable choice data: choices from a menu may be considered optimal according to some preference relation, but only among the sub-menu of alternatives which are themselves chosen in at least one of the menus among the total collection of observations. Choices are not restricted to outrank any alternatives that have never been sampled by the decision-maker within the choice framework. Such choices provide a dual interpretation of maintaining consistency among themselves with respect to some true welfare ordering, while also defining the knowledge available to the decision-maker about their preferences. This model is observationally equivalent (falsifiable under the same conditions) to rational choice, but may differ significantly from welfare-optimal choices depending on the sparsity of the collection of observed menus. I characterize various properties regarding the potential multiplicity and sub-optimality of seemingly rational choices in finite choice spaces. Then I consider how competitive models of sampling, in which two senders reveal alternatives to a receiver, can model seemingly rational choices as the synthesis of a corrupted learning process. I conclude with some applications to standard Economics by characterizing seemingly rational consumer choices, highlighting a class of `narrow' behaviors.
Misleading Facts
I develop a model of persuasion in which a sender is not allowed to lie, but may be strategically selective in their choice of facts to be misleading: to reveal facts knowing that they imply something false. To model a receiver who falls victim to their own narrow-minded implications, I consider the case that they hold point-prediction beliefs. The sender reveals a sequence of hard evidence that evokes a belief consistent with the evidence presented, but this belief contains more specificity than the evidence itself. The evocability (possibility for persuasion) of states are characterized under particular functional forms of belief-formation inspired by the heuristics literature. When the sender is uncertain of the true state, speeches that maximize the probability of implementing their preferred state are characterized by a maximally-agreeable revelation of evidence that solve a class of set-cover problems. A dynamic version of the model with feedback to the sender is included to capture the phenomenon of dynamic `phishing'.
Works in Progress
Sequential Choice Functions with Mauricio Ribeiro