@article{ref1,
title="The market for preferences",
journal="Cambridge journal of economics",
year="2004",
author="Earl, Peter E. and Potts, Jason",
volume="28",
number="4",
pages="619-633",
abstract="Learning processes are widely held to be the mechanism by which boundedly rational agents adapt to environmental changes. We argue that this same outcome might also be achieved by a different mechanism, namely specialisation and the division of knowledge, which we here extend to the consumer side of the economy. We distinguish between high-level preferences and low-level preferences as nested systems of rules used to solve particular choice problems. We argue that agents, while sovereign in high-level preferences, may often find it expedient to acquire, in a pseudo-market, the low-level preferences in order to make good choices when purchasing complex commodities about which they have little or no experience. A market for preferences arises when environmental complexity overwhelms learning possibilities and leads agents to make use of other people's specialised knowledge and decision rules.<p />",
language="",
issn="0309-166X",
doi="10.1093/cje/beh020",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cje/beh020"
}