AUTHOR & ABSTRACT
Francesco is an Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Pompeu Fabra Barcelona. He is affiliated with BSE where he also obtained a PhD in Economics. His research interests revolve around decision theory and behavioural economics, and game theory and experimental economics. His work has appeared in the Journal of Political Economy. In 2017, Francesco received the Enrique Fuentes Quintana prize for best doctoral thesis in the Social Sciences.
Title
Choice by Association
Joint work with J. Apesteguia
Abstract
Associations and concepts are key notions in the understanding of human reasoning in fields such as Philosophy, Cognitive Sciences, Linguistics and, more recently, Computer Science. In this paper, we propose a tractable framework in which to introduce the role of concept associations in choice behavior. In our model, the evaluation of alternatives may depend on their associations to concepts, where the relevant concepts are defined by the choice context. We provide axiomatic foundations to give empirical content to the model and develop a measure of the comparative statics of associations. We show that the model could be instrumental in understanding a wide range of behavioral phenomena, such as framing, discrimination, identity, culture, marketing, the media and political economy.