Consumer theory with bounded rational preferences

Building on the work of Shafer (1974), this paper provides a continuous bivariate representation theorem for preferences that need not be complete or transitive. Applying this result to the problem of choice from competitive budget sets allows for a proof of the existence of a demand correspondence for a consumer who has preferences within this class that are also convex. Similarly to the textbook theory of utility maximization, this proof also uses the Maximum Theorem. With an additional mild convexity axiom that conceptually parallels uncertainty aversion, the correspondence reduces to a function that satisfies WARP. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.