Professor Manipushpak Mitra, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata is presenting a seminar on Wednesday, February 24 in Seminar Hall 1 from 4;00 to 5:30 pm. The title of his talk is “Naive reasoning, unhappy sets and the lexicographic preferences over attributes”. The abstract of the paper is given below. You are invited to attend.

Abstract: In this paper we axiomatize the lexicographic preferences on the domain of attributes. We use three axioms based on fast/naive reasoning. Our first axiom is the standard strong monotonicity. The second axiom is naive continuity which is a weaker version of continuity. For the third axiom we consider unhappy sets that require that every element outside this set be preferred to all elements inside it. Specifically, the third axiom is naive stability which is a simple algorithm to compute the unhappy sets. Using these axioms, along with rationality, we axiomatize the lexicographic preferences. Our work is a justification based on preference-based approach of the experimental findings that individuals often demonstrate lexicographic orderings over attributes while making choices.

[This is a joint work with Mridu P. Goswami (Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata) and with Debapriya Sen (Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada)].