02019nam a2200205 4500 20260417111034.0 9781009340700 English 338.5 MAN/E Colon Classification Mandler, Michael 13270 Economics Without Preferences : Microeconomics and Policymaking Beyond the Maximizing Individual 1 UK: Cambridge University Press, 2025. 245p. 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. Micro Economic Policy 13271 ddc BK 756975 756975 0 0 ddc 0 0 REF ECN ECN PROC 2026-02-23 MBC/0763/2025,13/02/2026 11726.00 0 338.5 MAN/E ECN16987 2026-02-24 10:20:44 2026-02-23 BK