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A New Congruence Axiom and Transitive Rational Choice
Author(s) -
Lahiri Somdeb
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
the manchester school
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.361
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9957
pISSN - 1463-6786
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9957.00272
Subject(s) - axiom , rationality , congruence (geometry) , mathematical economics , transitive relation , axiom of choice , constructive set theory , zermelo–fraenkel set theory , mathematics , choice function , urelement , set (abstract data type) , set theory , combinatorics , computer science , epistemology , philosophy , geometry , programming language
Rationality in choice theory has been an abiding concern of decision theorists. A rationality postulate of considerable significance in the literature is the weak congruence axiom of Richter and Sen. It is well known that in discrete choice contexts of the classical type (i.e. all non‐empty finite subsets of a given set comprise the set of choice problems) this axiom is equivalent to full rationality. The question is: will a weakening of the weak congruence axiom suffice to imply full rationality? This is the question we take up in this paper. We propose a weaker new congruence axiom which along with the Chernoff axiom implies full rationality. The two axioms are independent. We also study interesting properties of these axioms and their interconnections through examples.