文档介绍：Rational Decisions
The Gorman Lectures in Economics
Series Editor, Richard Blundell
Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance,
Avinash K. Dixit
Rational Decisions,
Ken Binmore
A series statement appears at the back of the book
Rational Decisions
Ken Binmore
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2009 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-0-691-13074-3 (alk. paper)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008938513
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has posed in LucidaBright
Typeset by T&T Productions Ltd, London
Printed on acid-free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America
**********
This book began with two lectures I gave in 2006 at
University College London in memory of
Terence Gorman
who was a great economist and a good friend. He would
have wished me to dedicate this book to the fondly
remembered teacher at his grammar school in Northern
Ireland who first inspired him with a love of mathematics.
Contents
Preface ix
1 Revealed Preference 1
Rationality? 1
Modeling a Decision Problem 2
Reason Is the Slave of the Passions 3
Lessons from Aesop 5
Revealed Preference 7
Rationality and Evolution 12
Utility 14
Challenging Transitivity 17
Causal Utility Fallacy 19
Positive and Normative 22
2 Game Theory 25
Introduction 25
What Is a Game? 25
Paradox of Rationality? 26
b’s Problem 30
Extensive Form of a Game 31
3 Risk 35
Risk and Uncertainty 35
Von Neumann and Morgenstern 36
The St Petersburg Paradox 37
Expected Utility Theory 39
Paradoxes from A to Z 43
Utility Scales 46
Attitudes to Risk 50
Un