There is a surprising disconnect between formal rational choice theory and philosophical work on reasons. The one is silent on the role of reasons in rational choices, the other rarely engages with the formal models of decision problems used by social scientists. To bridge this gap, we propose a...

Rational choice theory analyzes how an agent can rationally act, given his or her preferences, but says little about where those preferences come from. Instead, pref- erences are usually assumed to be �xed and exogenously given. Building on related work on reasons and rational choice (Dietrich...

Bayesian epistemology tells us with great precision how we should move from prior to posterior beliefs in light of new evidence or information, but says little about where our prior beliefs come from. It o¤ers few resources to describe some prior beliefs as rational or well-justi�ed, and...

We introduce a “reason-based” way of rationalizing an agent’s choice behaviour, which explains choices by specifying which properties of the options or choice context the agent cares about (the “motivationally salient properties”) and how he or she cares about these properties (the...

How can different individuals' probability assignments to some events be aggregated into a collective probability assignment? Classic results on this problem assume that the set of relevant events -- the agenda -- is a σ-algebra and is thus closed under disjunction (union) and conjunction...

What is the relationship between degrees of belief and (all-or-nothing) beliefs? Can the latter be expressed as a function of the former, without running into paradoxes? We reassess this “belief-binarization” problem from the perspective of judgmentaggregation theory. Although some...

This review article introduces and evaluates various ways to aggregate probabilistic opinions of different individuals. For each of these three ways, an axiomatic characterization result is presented (a new one in the case of multiplicative pooling). The three ways satisfy different axioms and...

This paper has attempted to estimate the J-curve phenomenon for Azerbaijan using quarterly industry-level data over the period 2000-2009. A weighted average of the production indexes of Azerbaijan’s four major trading partners, which account for 70% of Azerbaijan’s total trade turnover, was...

This paper examines the degree of capital mobility in the countries of the Caucasus. We employ a simple model developed in the seminal paper by Feldstein and Horioka (1980). First, we estimate the model using conventional time-series econometrics in order to capture the short-run dynamics. Then,...

This paper seeks empirical evidence for the J-curve and the Marshal-Lerner condition for Azerbaijan. The results suggest that a real depreciation of the Azerbaijani Manat would cause a decline in the balance of trade in the short-run and an increase in the long-run. When including the prices of...