A course in decision theory and the related experimental evidence. Please email me if you spot any typos

Course Outline

Methodology: Lecture Notes

I expand on some of the points I make here in this presentation and this article. This article nicely captures the views of some proper decision theorists. If you are really keen this book covers a lot of the arguments we discussed in minute detail

Mathematical Preliminaries: Order Theory Measure Theory

For more details on these topics, Efe Ok has two books currently available for free online here (the books are "Elements of Order Theory" and "Probability with Economic Applications". Scroll down untill you can see them). The book on order theory has a lot more detail than we need, but chapter 1 and the interlude on the Axiom of Choice will be very useful. For measure theory, chapters B, C and E are of particular interest.

Choice and Rationality: Choice, Revealed Preference and Utility Testing for Rationality Failures of Rationality

For more details on utility maximization and preferences, chapters 2 and 3 of the Kreps book are great. For the more advanced stuff, go back to Efe, and chapter 9 of the order theory book. For tests of rationality, Varian has a very nice survey. In terms of data, here are the slides that I put up. They draw on data from two papers, available here and here. Two other papers that have data on the degree to which people are rational are here and here.

Homework 1

Homework 2