The computational complexity of rationalizing Pareto optimal choice behavior

Demuynck, Thomas

doi:10.1007/s00355-013-0735-1

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…As we shall see, this point is closely related, though not equivalent, to the fact, proved by Demuynck (2011), that it is an N P-complete problem to determine whether choice behaviour is rationalizable by two linear orders. Similar proofs of N P-completeness of rationalization have been given for other economic theories -see Umans (2008, 2009), Apesteguia and Ballester (2010) and Demuynck (2014). In general, economists have been sceptical about the implication and meaning of these results, especially because of the worst-case assumption behind computational complexity analysis.…”

Section: Ronen Gradwohl and Eran Shmayamentioning

confidence: 74%

Tractable Falsifiability

Gradwohl¹,

Shmaya²

2015

Economics and Philosophy

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract We propose to strengthen Popper's notion of falsifiability by adding the requirement that when an observation is inconsistent with a theory, there must be a "short proof" of this inconsistency. We model the concept of a short proof using tools from computational complexity, and provide some examples of economic theories that are falsifiable in the usual sense but not with this additional requirement. We consider several variants of the definition of "short proof" and several assumptions about the difficulty of computation, and study their different implications on the falsifiability of theories. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

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