In this introduction, we discuss a number of reasons why preference change has been neglected in the social sciences, in particular in economics. We argue that recent developments make this neglect less acceptable than it may have been in the past. We then propose a modelling approach to preference change that starts out with the standard preference notion and pays careful attention to its formal properties, in particular the connections between preference relata, the logical constraints on preferences, and their temporal specification. Based on this proposal, we categorise preference change models into four groups: those that derive changed preference from more basic structures, those that refer to the temporal dimension, those that focus on consistency preservation, and finally those that offer an evolutionary account. Using this categorization, we also introduce the other papers of this anthology.
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Grüne-Yanoff, T., Hansson, S.O. (2009). Preference Change: An Introduction. In: Grüne-Yanoff, T., Hansson, S.O. (eds) Preference Change. Theory and Decision Library, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2593-7_1
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