(F)Lexicographic Shortlist Method

Standard rational choice relies on the assumption that a decision maker is certain about her preferences. The psychology literature, on the other hand, provides well-established evidence that consumers are often uncertain about the true value of alternatives. This is particularly so when alternatives have several attributes and focusing on different attributes shifts a decision maker's ranking of alternatives. In this paper, we propose and behaviorally characterize a new model of boundedly rational choice that formalizes these insights from psychology into a choice procedure. Simply put, our approach introduces menu dependence into the idea of lexicographic preferences. We study some of its properties and highlight how this procedure exacerbates any welfare judgments.