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1、Wiley, The London School of Economics and Political Science and The Suntory and Toyota International Centresfor Economics and Related Disciplinesare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toEconomica.http:/www.jstor.orgThe Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Econom
2、ics and RelatedThe Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related DisciplinesDisciplinesBehaviour and the Concept of Preference Author(s): Amartya Sen Source: Economica,New Series, Vol. 40, No. 159 (Aug., 1973), pp. 241-259 Published by: on behalf of and WileyThe London School of
3、 Economics and Political ScienceTheSuntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines Stable URL: http:/www.jstor.org/stable/2552796 Accessed: 15-08-2014 21:29 UTCYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms at any rate I have not seen any argument
4、 that has been put forward justifying such a dichotomy. The distinction lies only in the verification question and that, as we have seen, is really a red herring. Treated as an axiom in the light of which consumers choices are analysed and interpreted, rather than as a hypothesis which is up for ver
5、ification, there is no case for restricting the scope of the Weak Axiom arbitrarily to budget sets only, and in the absence of this invidious distinction, transitivity follows directly from the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference. If a consumer has chosen x rejecting y in one case, chosen y rejecting
6、z in another, and chosen z rejecting x in a third case, then he has not only violated transitivity, he must violate the Weak 1 J. Ville, “Sur les conditions dexistence dune ophelimite totale et dun indice du niveau des prix“, Ainnales de 1 Universite de Lyon, vol. 9 (1946); J. von Neumann and O. Mor
7、genstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behaviouir, Princeton, 1944. 2 Hicks, op. cit., p. 110. 3 Cf. D. Gale, “A Note on Revealed Preference“, Economica, vol. 27 (1960). This content downloaded from 220.178.4.217 on Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:29:08 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions1973 BEHA
8、VIOUR AND THE CONCEPT OF PREFERENCE 247 Axiom of Revealed Preference as well. No matter what he chooses given the choice over x, y and z, he must run counter to the Weak Axiom, as demonstrated. The fact that he cannot be observed in a choice over (x, y, z) makes no real difference since no matter wh
9、at he chooses he must logically violate the Weak Axiom. In this sense, an observed violation of the Strong Axiom will logically imply a violation of the Weak Axiom as well. A number of other distinct axioms that have been proposed in the literature can also be shown to be equivalent once the arbitra
10、ry restrictions are removed. (If the domain of the choice function includes all pairs and triples, then these apparently different axioms turn out to be logically equivalent.) IV I would now like to turn to the fundamental assumption of the revealed preference approach, viz, that people do reveal th
11、eir underlying preferences through their actual choices. Is this a reasonable presump- tion? If a person chose x when y was available, it would seem reason- able to argue that he did not really regard y to be better than x. There is, of course, the problem that a persons choices may not be made afte
12、r much thinking or after systematic comparisons of alternatives. I am inclined to believe that the chair on which you are currently sitting in this room was not chosen entirely thoughtlessly, but I am not totally persuaded that you in fact did choose the particular chair you have chosen through a ca
13、reful calculation of the pros and cons of sitting in each possible chair that was vacant when you came in. Even some important decisions in life seem to be taken on the basis of incomplete thinking about the possible courses of action, and the hypothesis of revealed preference, as a psychological ge
14、neralization, may not be altogether convincing. These questions are well-known as also are the difficulties arising from open or hidden persuasion involved in advertise- ments and propaganda, which frequently mess up not only ones attitude towards the alternatives available but also towards the act
15、of choice itself. These problems are important, but I shall not go into them any further, partly because they have been much discussed elsewhere, but also because I have no competence whatever to throw light on the psychological issues underlying these problems. Instead I shall try to discuss one an
16、d a half other issues which seem to me to be also im- portant. The half issue should perhaps come first. The logical property of connectedness (or completeness as it is sometimes called) of binary relations is an important characteristic to examine in the context of evaluating the fundamental assumption of revealed preference. Connectedness of preference requires that between any two alternatives x and y, the person in ques
