About Me

Welcome! I am a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. I have broad interests in microeconomic theory and methodological questions in economics. My research focuses on revealed preference theory.

My email is cugarte@berkeley.edu

Working Papers

Smooth Rationalization

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Economic models usually endow agents with (well-behaved) differentiable utilities. However, the behavioral implications of such an assumption are unclear. We study conditions under which consumer choices can be rationalized by a differentiable utility, which we call smooth rationalization. The main consequence of assuming a differentiable utility is that choices that are revealed indifferent to each other must have the same marginal rate of substitution. To include this requirement, we propose a modification of the original data set using the revealed indifference relation and show that rationalizing the modified data set is equivalent to smooth rationalization. The same reasoning applies when differentiability is required for a strictly concave utility. We also show that the existence of second- and higher-order derivatives, which are used in comparative statics, cannot be tested. We test smooth rationalization into several experimental data sets. Our results suggest that, in most cases, assuming differentiability is not costly from an empirical standpoint.

Preference Recoverability from Inconsistent Choices

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We study the problem of recovering preferences from choices that are inconsistent with the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preferences (GARP). The underlying model is that the failure of GARP arises because the agent imperfectly implements her preferences. Existing methods to recover preferences rely on intuitive motivations but lack desirable statistical properties. Instead, we propose the first statistically consistent estimator. The main assumption is that revealed preferences, the classical tool used to analyze choices, are more likely to be correct than incorrect. Therefore, they are a trustworthy source of information. The set of possible estimators for finite data is characterized by the directly revealed preferences that are interpreted as incorrect. Besides consistency, our estimator also satisfies partial efficiency, which is a standard requirement in the literature. We apply our estimator to laboratory data and compare it with that derived from the Varian index. Our estimator presents a stronger correlation between accuracy and its measure of distance from GARP. It is also significantly faster and more feasible to implement for subjects with many inconsistencies. Finally, we extend our method to a vast class of choice problems, beyond the classical consumer setting.

The generality of the Strong Axiom

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Economic research usually endows consumers with a single-valued demand function. When choices are rationalizable, this assumption can be tested by the Strong Axiom of Revealed Preferences, SARP, as if they fail such a test, the demand is set-valued. We extend this test to non-rationalizable choices using partial efficiency, the most popular method to recover preferences. Under partial efficiency, a single-valued demand cannot be tested; furthermore, it can always be chosen to be infinitely differentiable. Hence, the existence of a single-valued, infinitely differentiable demand is falsified if, and only if, choices are rationalizable but fail SARP, which we do not observe in laboratory data. From an empirical standpoint, our results suggest that assuming a differentiable demand does not carry a cost.

Work in Progress

Smooth Rationalization by structured utilities

Studies rationalization by differentiable utilities in more structured settings, specifically homothetic utilities and quasilinear utilities. The results in the paper Smooth Rationalization can be naturally extended in both cases by using the specific structure of the utility functions to infer indifferences.

A geometric proof of Afriat Theorem

Presents a non-constructive proof of Afriat Theorem which uses a geometric argument to understand why is it always possible to rationalize choice data from linear prices using a concave utility function. It also sheds light on why concavity might be loss as the number of observations goes to infinity, but quasiconcavity can always be preserved.

CV

You can download my CV here.