Revealed Preference Tests in Individual and Collective Choice

该项目使用数学技术来开发重要经济理论的广泛可测试的含义。研究小组考察了需求理论、匹配理论和群体选择理论。项目的第一部分分析了个体消费者自利行为的数学模型，以确定实际消费数据何时可以显示商品是互补的还是替代的。互补和替代理论是经济学中最古老的理论之一，但迄今为止还没有开发出检验这一理论的全套方法。群体行为也有可测试的含义。经济匹配理论试图解释，例如，雇主和工人是如何相互选择的。将工作与雇员匹配，为雇主和雇员作为一个整体产生一些资源。在经济理论中，这些资源产生的方式有一个非常具体的数学形式，而pi正在探索如何使用实际就业数据来检验这一理论。pi也在研究帕累托最优模型。这是经济学的基本思想之一，如果没有办法让任何人变得更好而不让另一个人变得更糟，那么经济结果就是帕累托最优的。这是用来衡量一个结果是否具有经济效率的核心思想，它不仅被研究人员广泛使用，而且被政策制定者广泛使用。pi正在开发方法来检查观察到的社会选择，以确定它们是否为帕累托最优。

This project uses mathematical techniques to develop a wide range of testable impliactions of important economic theories. The research team examines the theory of demand, matching, and the theory of group choice. The first part of the project analyzes the mathematical model of self-interested behavior by individual consumers to determine when data on actual consumption can show that goods are complements or substitutes. The theory of complements and substitutes is one of the oldest in economics, but the full range of ways to test this theory has not been developed up to now.Group behavior also has testable implications. The economic theory of matching attempts to explain, for example, how employers and workers choose each other. Matching a job to an employee generates some resources for the employer and employee as a unit. In economic theory, the way these resources are generated has a very specific mathematical form, and the PIs are discovering how to test the theory using actual employement data.The PIs are also examining the model of Pareto optimality. Again, this is one of the basic ideas in economics -- an economic outcome is Pareto optimal if there is no way to make anyone better off without making someone worse off. This the core idea used to measure whether an outcome is economically efficient, and it is widely used not just by researchers but by policy-makers. The PIs are developing ways to examine observed social choices to determine if they are Pareto optimal.