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Testing decision rules for multiattribute decision making

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Current Trends in Economics

Part of the book series: Studies in Economic Theory ((ECON.THEORY,volume 8))

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Abstract

This paper investigates the existence of an editing phase and studies the compliance of subjects’ behaviour with the most popular multiattribute decision rules. We observed that our data comply well with the existence of an editing phase, at least if we allow for a natural error rate of some 25%. We also found a satisfactory performance of certain groups of subjects for the conjunctive rule, for the elimination—by—aspects rule, for the majority rule, and for the maximin rule. Our data suggest, however, rejection of the prominence hypothesis and of the maximax rule. Thus, our experiment sheds light on the existence of an editing phase and on the use of various multiattribute decision rules.

This paper was initiated when the first author spent three weeks at the Center of Economic Research at Tilburg University. He wants to express his indebtedness to the hospitality of the CentER. Financial support of the Landeszentralbank für Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Schleswig-Holstein and the European Community under Contract CHRX-CT94-0647 is gratefully acknowledged. For useful comments we are indebted to Eric van Danime and to Professors Albers and Brockhoff.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Finanzwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Olshausenstr. 40, D-24098, Kiel, Germany

    Christian Seidl & Stefan Traub

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  1. Christian Seidl
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  2. Stefan Traub
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Bogazici University, Bebek, 80815, Istanbul, Turkey

    Ahmet Alkan

  2. Department of Economics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-1310, USA

    Charalambos D. Aliprantis

  3. Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Champaign, IL, 61820-6271, USA

    Nicholas C. Yannelis

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Seidl, C., Traub, S. (1999). Testing decision rules for multiattribute decision making. In: Alkan, A., Aliprantis, C.D., Yannelis, N.C. (eds) Current Trends in Economics. Studies in Economic Theory, vol 8. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03750-8_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03750-8_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-08471-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-03750-8

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