Revealed Preference Axioms for Rational Choice
This paper provides a simple axiomatic foundation of rational choice when the indifference relation is not necessarily transitive. Utilizing a notion of revealed preference relation, which says that an alternative x is revealed preferred to an alternative y whenever x is chosen while y is available, this paper establishes that the requirement that a rejected alternative of a set A can never be revealed preferred to some chosen element of A (resp. some element of A) is equivalent to quasi-transitive (resp. acyclic) rationalization; i.e., is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a strict partial order (resp. a suborder); while the requirement that at least one of the chosen elements of a set A is always strictly revealed preferred to every rejected alternative of A is equivalent to pseudotransitive rationalization i.e., is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an interval order. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.