Dictionary

revealed preference en · NOUN

Etymology

Coined by American economist Paul Samuelson in the title of his 1948 paper expounding a theory for inferring consumer preference from purchasing habits. Samuelson first published a version of his theory ten years earlier, in a 1938 paper, but did not use the term revealed preference in the 1938 paper.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) A consumer preference as inferred from purchasing habits according to a theory invented by American economist Paul A. Samuelson.
   • And how do you think about the arguably revealed preference of wealth leading to separation that might suggest this isn’t actually what people want, maybe sometimes what they’re forced to accept. 2023 June 9, Ezra Klein, “The Ezra Klein Show: What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
   • Thus, we observe the elderly’s revealed preference for health plan combinations with different features. 1998, Katherine M. Harris and Michael P. Keane (26 November 1998 [the printed version gives the date incorrectly as 1999]), A model of health plan choice: inferring preferences and perceptions from a combination of revealed preference and attitudinal data, Journal of Econometrics, 89(1–2):131–157, DOI:10.1016/S0304-4076(98)00058-X, page 132
   • Consumption theory in terms of revealed preference 1948, Paul A. Samuelson (November 1948), "Consumption theory in terms of revealed preference", Economica, New Series, 15(60):243–253, DOI:10.2307/2549561, JSTOR:2549561, page 243 (article title)
   • This paper documents the revealed preferences of U.S. open-end mutual funds for various stock characteristics. 1996, Eric G. Falkenstein (March 1996), "Preferences for stock characteristics as revealed by mutual fund portfolio holdings", Journal of Finance, 51(1):111–135, doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1996.tb05204.x, page 111
   • This paper examines revealed preferences of parents for their children's education, using parent requests for individual elementary school teachers and information on teacher attributes, including principal reports of teacher characteristics that are typically unobservable. 2007, Brian A. Jacob and Lars Lefgren (1 November 2007), "What do parents value in education? An empirical investigation of parents’ revealed preferences for teachers", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(4):1603–1637, doi:10.1162/qjec.2007.122.4.1603, page 1603
   • Knowledge of expansion paths is shown to improve the power of nonparametric tests of revealed preference. 2003, Richard W. Blundell, Martin Browning, and Ian A. Crawford (January 2003), "Nonparametric Engel curves and revealed preference", Econometrica, 71(1):205–240, DOI:10.1111/1468-0262.00394, page 205
   • We show that if psychological preferences are incomplete then revealed preferences can be intransitive without exposing agents to manipulations or violating outcome rationality. 2005, Michael Mandler (February 2005), "Incomplete preferences and rational intransitivity of choice", Games and Economic Behavior, 50(2):255–277, doi:10.1016/j.geb.2004.02.007, page 255
2. (uncountable) Samuelson's theory for inferring consumer preference from purchasing habits.
   • We follow a revealed preference approach, and obtain two nested models of rational choice that allow phenomena like the status quo bias and the endowment effect, and that are applicable in any choice situation to which the standard (static) choice model applies. 2005, Yusufcan Masatlioglu and Efe A. Ok (March 2005), "Rational choice with status quo bias", Journal of Economic Theory, 121(1):1–29 (DOI:10.1016/j.jet.2004.03.007), page 1
   • Most economists, however, are firmly rooted in the revealed preference paradigm to estimate the use values of environmental resources. 2011, John C. Whitehead, Timothy C. Haab, and Ju-Chin Huang, chapter 1: "Introduction" (pages 1–9), in John C. Whitehead, Timothy C. Haab, and Ju-Chin Huang, editors (2011), Preference data for environmental valuation: combining revealed and stated approaches, Routledge Explorations in Environmental Economics (New York: Routledge), page 1
   • This paper reports on an attempt to apply revealed preference to the activities of the federal government to determine the weights it attached to various macro policy goals during the Eisenhower and Kennedy-Johnson administrations. 1973, Ann F. Friedlaender (February 1973), "Macro policy goals in the postwar period: a study in revealed preference", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(1):25–43, page 25

Forms

Relateds

vote with one's feet · foot voting

Translations (1)

de offenbarte Präferenz (inferred preference)