A revealed preference test for weakly separable preferences

Working paper

Consider a finite data set of price vectors and consumption bundles; under what conditions will there be a weakly separable utlity function that rationalizes the data? This paper shows that rationalization in this sense is possible if and only if there exists a preference order on some finite set of consumption bundles that is consistent with the observations and that is weakly separable. Since there can only be a finite number of preference orders on this set, the problem of rationalization with a weakly separable utility function is solvable.

Authors: Quah, J

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Publication date: 2012-04-01
• Paper number: 601
• Keywords: preorder; concave utility function; budget set; Afriat's theorem; generalized axiom of revealed preference