PREFERENCE FOR FLEXIBILITY AND RANDOM CHOICE: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS
1 : Brown University
People may be uncertain about future preferences, leading to both a preference for flexibility in choice between menus and stochastic choice from menus. We describe an experimental test of preference uncertainty in a real-effort task. We observe subjects' preferences over menus of work contracts, and choice of effort from those contracts. We find that preference uncertainty is important: 48% of subjects exhibited preference for flexibility. A model of preference uncertainty accurately describes the relationship between choice of and from menus. Introducing a stochastic element to work contracts increased preference for flexibility, suggesting a causal role uncertainty in menu preferences