Revealed Attention

2183 Revealed preference is one of the most influential ideas in economics and has been applied to a number of areas of economics, including consumer theory. According to standard revealed preference theory, x is revealed to be preferred to y if and only if x is chosen when y is also available (Samuelson 1938). Any choice reversal, therefore, observed both empirically and experimentally, is attributed to irrationality since it cannot be expressed as a preference maximization. The revealed preference argument relies on the implicit assumption that a decision maker (DM) considers all feasible alternatives. Without the full consideration assumption, the standard revealed preference method can be misleading. It is possible that the DM prefers x to y but she chooses y when x is present simply because she does not realize that x is also available (Hausman 2008). For example, while using a search engine, a DM might only pay attention to alternatives appearing on the first page of the results since it takes too much time to consider all the search results. She then picks the best alternative of those on the first page, say y. It is possible that her most preferred item, x, does not appear on the first page. Therefore we, as outside observers, cannot conclude that y is better than x even though y is chosen when x is