Question

HOMEWORK # 1 (for due date see web page) .You live in a city where all the people have the same preferences for food and these preferences are intransitive. You decide to open a restaurant and put several choices on the menu, but actually have only one dish in the kitchen (that saves you a lot in terms of costs!). You will change the available dish every day, but on any given day there is no real choice. Since your customers are not rational (they have intransitive preferences) you are not worried about them ordering a dish that is not available. Why is that? Because you can always present alternatives in an appropriate order and manipulate the customers choices. For example, suppose you knovw that your customers prefer meat to fish, fish to salad and salad to meat (a) Today you only have salad. How should you frame the choice to the customer in such a way that she picks salad? [Hint: present choices in pairs and in a sequence.] (b) How would you make the customer choose fish, if fish was all you had? (c) How would you make the customer choose meat, if meat was all you had?

Answer 1

a)

Fish or Salad (customer picks fish)

Meat or Fish (customer picks meat)

Salad or Meat (customer picks salad)

Thus in the end, he will choose Salad.

b)

Meat or Fish (picks meat)

Meat or Salad (picks salad)

Fish or Salad (picks fish)

Thus, in the end customer choose Fish

c)

Meat or Salad (picks salad)

Fish or Salad (picks fish)

Fish or Meat (picks meat)

Thus, in the end customer choose meat