摘要：In a series of influential papers, Varian (1982, 1985) extended and refined thework of Afriat (1967, 1976), Samuelson (1948), Houthakker (1950), and Richter (1966),among others, to form the basis for a series of empirically testable hypotheses knowngenerally as the theory of revealed preference. This work demonstrates how observeddemand behavior can be used to recover information about an individual's preferenceordering without resorting to parametric assumptions regarding the form of theconsumer's underlying demand or utility function. Revealed preference theory has beeninfluential in developing empirical tests of utility theory (Varian (1982, 1983)),investigating issues of changes in consumer's tastes (Chalfant and Alston (1988)), testingwhether firms behave as profit maximizers (Varian (1984)), as well as a variety of otherapplications. The general framework has also been extended to account for stochasticelements (Varian (1985)), Sakong and Hayes (1993)). The ability to characterizeinformation about consumer's preferences without imposing a specific functional formfor utility or demand is intuitively appealing and has provided a rich base for empiricalresearch in consumer and firm theory.
