Investigating the Rational Behavior and Testing the Change in Consumer Preferences of Cereals Bundle in Urban Households in Iran

Subject Areas : Agricultural Economics Research

Hossein Noroozi ¹

1 - PhD Student in Agricultural Economics -, Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agricultural Economics and Development, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran.

Received: 2019-06-25 Accepted : 2022-04-19 Published : 2022-04-21

Keywords: Urban households, consumer preferences, Revealed Preferences Axioms, Neoclassical Utility Function, Cereals,

Abstract :

Consumer rational behavior is the first and most basic presupposition of the development of economic theories in the field of consumer behavior. Demand studies are correct and investable when the demand and utility model is based on a good approximation of the utility function and the actual demand, and this hypothesis is untestable, so the validity of the rational behavior hypothesis should be fixed and the only test to perform that application of the principles of preferences has been revealed. The existence of a generalized principle of revealed preferences for a series of consumption data is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a concave, continuous, uniform, and irreducible utility function that interprets these observations rationally. The purpose of this study is to investigate the hypothesis of rational behavior and the test of changing the preferences of cereal basket consumers in urban households using the principles of revealed preferences, a non-systematic effects test method for the period 1976-2014.

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