This doctoral dissertation research will be done by Nathaniel Wilcox under the supervision of Professor Telser. It will look at an important anomaly found by economists and psychologists known as preference reversal. There have been many alternative (although generally unsatisfactory) explanations for preference reversal findings in the experimental economics literature. The investigator will study whether decision cost analysis is a viable explanation, since it considers computational and constraints faced by agents in utilizing their preferences for certain kinds of decisions. The analysis will be tested in an experimental context with 200 subjects using a personal computer.
