Prior-Free Optimality and Satisficing- A Common Framework and its Experimental Implementation

Similar to welfare economics where with(out) interpersonal comparisonsone defines unique (set-valued) welfare (Pareto) optima, we present a frameworkfor one-person decision making where with(out) a prior probability distributionindividual optimality prescribes usually a unique (set of) choice(s).Satisfiable aspirations in the sense that there exists some choice guaranteeingthem define a much larger choice set whose intersection with the set ofprior-free optimal choices is never empty. We also review experimental proceduresand results which incentivize aspiration formation and reject evenprior-free optimality experimentally.