Economics without Preferences lays out a new microeconomics – a theory of choice behavior, markets, and welfare – for agents who lack the preferences and marginal judgments that economics normally relies on. Agents without preferences defy the rules of the traditional model of rational choice but they can still systematically pursue their interests. The theory that results resolves several puzzles in economics. Status quo bias and other anomalies of behavioral economics shield agents from harm; they are expressions rather than violations of rationality. Parts of economic orthodoxy go out the window. Agents will fail to make the fine-grained trade-offs ingrained in conventional economics, leading market prices to be volatile and cost-benefit analysis to break down. This book provides policy alternatives to fill this void. Governments can spur innovation, the main benefit markets can deliver, while sheltering agents from the upheavals that accompany economic change.

Preface
1. Marginal utility matters
Part I. Trade-Offs and Rationality:
2. Utility as an ordering principle
3. Incomplete preferences
4. The rationality of choice
5. Safety bias
6. The myth of indifference
part II. Economic Analysis and Policy Without Preferences:
7. The volatility of prices
8. Trouble with welfare economics
9. Pareto without preferences
10. Utilitarianism without utility
11. Production and rationality
12. Custom and flexibility
Appendix.