Ananda Gupta wrote:
>
> People say they want things. But when it comes time to bear the costs of
> having those things, they change their minds. That is, people's true
> preferences can be best discovered through observing their actions, not
> their words.
>
> Does anyone know of any formal economics literature having to do with the
> above proposition? Are there any articles considered classics (since that
> does seem to be a basic issue in economics)?
The classic is probably Milton Friedman's "Methodology of Positive
Economics" in *Essays in Positive Economics*. But note that few try to
provide much empirical evidence for this, probably for the simple reason
that what people say IS a rather good predictor of what they will do.
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"[T]he power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in
those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."
-- Edward Gibbon, *The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*
