Response Time and Utility

Abstract

Response time is the time an agent needs to make a decision. One fundamental finding in psychology and neuroscience is that, in a binary choice, the response time is shorter as the difference between the utilities of the two options becomes larger. We consider situations in which utilities are not observed, but rather inferred from revealed preferences: meaning they are inferred from subjects' choices. Given data on subjects' choices, and the time to make those choices, we give conditions on the data that characterize the property that response time is decreasing in utility differences.

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