Seyedian co-authors consumer consumption preference study presented at conference

"Consumption Preferences That are Merely Reflexive," a paper co-written by School of Business Professor Moj Seyedian, was presented at the Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Economic Association Conference held in June at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA.

To establish important conclusions of the prevalent consumer theory, it is assumed that possible consumptions are completely ordered by consumer preferences. By using examples, the paper shows that the assumption does not hold true in real life. So, the work explores the possibility of replacing the unrealistic assumption.

The consumer preference of consumption is such a binary relation that satisfies reflexivity. Under such assumed condition, the following results, among others, are established. For a consumer, no matter how they prefer one consumption over another:

•    there are incomparable consumptions;

•    consumption preferences may not be transitive;

•    the indifference relation of consumptions in practice may not be transitive.

Although the results have been confirmed by different authors with varied settings, confirmations in the paper are based purely on analytical analysis without making use of any auxiliary concepts.
Co-authors of the article include Jeffrey (Yi-Lin) Forrest, Davood Darvishi, Rhonda S. Clark and Jun Liu.