This afternoon I was reading a book about rationality in voting behavior called “An economic theory of political action in a democracy”[@downs1957economic]. An amazing work (so far), for sure I do not discard that it’s likely I’ve a biased position regarding the application and precision of rational models in economics. However, what impressed me was authors’ self-awareness of the underlying flaws behind rational analysis in decision making, and not covering them like they do not exist in a book from 1957! Definitely, a book I wish have time to read in detail… Nevertheless, I won’t let you miss the opportunity to read what Anthony Downs said about the requirements (or assumptions) for being called a econo-rational human:

Economic rationality can also be formally defined in another manner. A rational man is one who behaves as follows:

1. he can always make a decision when confronted with a range of alternatives;
2. he ranks all the alternatives facing him in order of his preference in such a way that each is either preferred to, indifferent to, or inferior to each other;
3. his preference ranking is transitive;
4. he always chooses from among the possible alternatives that which ranks highest in his preference ordering; and
5. he always makes the same decision each time he is confronted with the same alternatives.

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