Who Is (More) Rational?
通过大规模实验检验决策与效用最大化的一致性，发现一致性得分与财富显著相关，标准差增加对应15-19%更多家庭财富，表明实验室中的理性决策能力可预测现实经济成果。
Revealed preference theory offers a criterion for decision-making quality: if decisions are high quality then there exists a utility function the choices maximize. We conduct a large-scale experiment to test for consistency with utility maximization. Consistency scores vary markedly within and across socioeconomic groups. In particular, consistency is strongly related to wealth: A standard deviation increase in consistency is associated with 15–19 percent more household wealth. This association is quantitatively robust to conditioning on correlates of unobserved constraints, preferences, and beliefs. Consistency with utility maximization under laboratory conditions thus captures decision-making ability that applies across domains and influences important real-world outcomes.