Many studies document failures of expected utility’s key assumption, the independence axiom. Here, we show that independence can be decomposed into two distinct axioms - betweenness and homotheticity - and that these two axioms are necessary and sufficient for independence. Thus, independence...

A decision maker (DM) makes choices from different sets of alternatives. The DM is initially fully ignorant of the payoff associated to each alternative, and learns these payoffs only after a large number of choices have been made. We show that, in the presence of an outside option once payoffs...

The standard economic choice model assumes that the decision maker chooses from <i>sets</i> of alternatives. In contrast, we analyze a choice model in which the decision maker encounters the alternatives in the form of a <i>list</i>. We present two axioms similar in nature to the classical axioms of choice...