A step towards a unified model of behaviour

[Victor Aguiar]

Dear all, 

this is my new paper attempting an new answer, to the question of a unified model of bounded rationality. 

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.06842

Title Tabular Foundation Models and the Unity of Economic Behaviour

Abstract: 

Economics uses different behavioural models for risk, time, losses, valuation, and social
choice. I study a unified choice experiment in which the same decision makers face all
these domains. I hide a decision maker’s choices in one domain and ask a frozen tabular
foundation model to recover them from that decision maker’s choices elsewhere and
labelled choices by other participants. The foundation model improves on the trainingsample median, and the gain disappears when visible choices are shuffled across decision makers. I then estimate one random-utility model over the foundation model’s learned representation. This structural model applies the same utility function in every domain, retains most of the foundation model’s reduction in prediction error, predicts domains excluded from utility estimation, and reproduces how behavioural measures co-move across people. The resulting model separates three objects: a learned common choice domain, one systematic utility function on that domain, and one random component that generates stochastic choice on observed menus.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Victor