We employ the theory of rational choice to examine whether observable choices from feasible sets of prospects can be generated by the optimization of some underlying decision criterion under uncertainty. Rather than focusing on a specific theory of choice, our objective is to formulate a general...

We analyze infinite-horizon choice functions within the setting of a simple linear technology. Time consistency and efficiency are characterized by stationary consumption and inheritance functions, as well as a transversality condition. In addition, we consider the equity axioms Suppes-Sen,...

We study two‐stage collective decision‐making procedures where in the first stage, part of the voters decide what issues will be put in the agenda and in the second stage, the whole set of voters decides on the positions to be adopted regarding the issues that are in the agenda. Using a...

We study the possibilities for agenda manipulation under strategic voting for two prominent sequential voting procedures: the amendment procedure and the successive procedure. We show that a well known result for tournaments, namely that the successive procedure is (weakly) more manipulable than...

A decision maker may not perfectly maximize her preference over the feasible set. She may feel it is good enough to maximize her preference over a sufficiently large consideration set; or just require that her choice is sufficiently well-ranked (e.g., in the top quintile of options); or even...

We model the decision problems faced by the members of societies whose new members are determined by vote. We adopt a number of simplifying assumptions: the founders and the candidates are fixed; the society operates for a fixed number of periods and holds elections at the beginning of each period;...

We provide an axiomatic treatment of the measurement of economic insecurity, assuming that individual insecurity depends on the current wealth level and its variations experienced in the past. The first component plays the role of a buffer stock to rely on in case of an adverse future event. The...

We examine the measurement of individual poverty in an intertemporal context. Our aim is to capture the importance of persistence in a state of poverty and we characterize a corresponding individual intertemporal poverty measure. Our first axiom requires that intertemporal poverty is identical...

Public policies often involve choices of alternatives in which the size and the composition of the population may vary. Examples are the allocation of resources to prenatal care and the design of aid packages to developing countries. In order to assess the corresponding feasible choices on...