Human States Questions

Article is attached below. Answer the three questions throughly and make sure to completely answer it to make it look like you understood the questions. Write 4 sentences for each question showing you read the text.

Question:

1. On p. 7, Hausman states ‘there are three uses of “prefer” and “preference”: (1) comparative liking, (2) choice, and (3) comparative evaluation’. Earlier in the section, Hausman explains the difference between “liking” and “evaluation”. Can you name a situation where you like A over B, but evaluate B to be overall better than A? (As usual, you can use Hausman’s example).

2.On p.9, Hausman says “completeness, transitivity, and context independence largely rule out the possibility that preferences are just matters of taste”. What Hausman means here is this: if economists uses “preference” to mean “comparative liking”, the axioms are obviously wrong. Why?

3. What kind of imaginary scenarios can show that “Preferences are not expected benefit rankings?” (p.10) In other words, what are the kind of scenario where S can prefer A over B, while benefiting more from B than from A?