Kota Saito
Kota Saito
Professor of Economics
M.A., University of Tokyo, 2007; Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2011. Assistant Professor, Caltech, 2011-16; Professor, 2017-.
Profile
The goal of Kota Saito's research is to study individual decision making. His main focus is in decision theory, developing mathematical models of decision making that account for some of the behavioral regularities documented in experimental economics and psychology.
Saito's research has centered around five main topics: (i) decision making under uncertainty, (ii) other-regarding preferences, (iii) time preferences, (iv) the role of perception in stochastic choice, and (v) response time in various decision making. Depending on the purpose of each study, he uses three primary tools: (a) preference relation, (b) consumption-price data, and (c) stochastic choice function.
Research Summary
Decision Theory; Behavioral Economics; Experimental Economics
Selected Awards
- NSF Grant SES-1919263, Modeling Stochastic Intertemporal Preferences (Collaborative research with Jay Lu (UCLA)), 2019–2026, PI.
- NSF Grant SES-1558757, Revealed Preference Tests and Experiments for Choices under Uncertainty, 2016–2022, Co-PI with F. Echenique.
- Pension Research Council/TIAA Institute Partnership Grant 2017-2018.
Featured News
What is in People's Minds When They Buy Stocks?
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September 19, 2019
The dominant model for financial decisions does not appear to explain people's behaviors
Selected Publications
Published/Forthcoming Papers
- "Random Utility Model with Unobservable Alternatives" with Haruki Kono, Alec Sandroni. Forthcoming in American Economic Review.
- "Axiomatization of Random Utility Model with Unobservable Alternatives" with Haruki Kono, Alec Sandroni. Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.
- "Approximate Expected Utility Rationalization," joint with F. Echenique and T. Imai, Volume 21, Issue 5, October 2023, Pages 1821–1864, Journal of the European Economic Association.
- "Adjacencies on the Multiple Choice Polytope" with Jean-Paul Doignon, Volume 114, June 2023, Journal of Mathematical Psychology.
- "The Relation between Behavior under Risk and over Time" 2(1), 1–16, 2020, joint with A. Chakraborty and Y. Halevy, American Economic Journal: Insight.
- "General Luce Model," 1–16, 2018, joint with F. Echenique, Economic Theory.
- "Random Intertemporal Choice," 177, 780–815, 2018, joint with J. Lu, Journal of Economic Theory
- "The Perception-Adjusted Luce Model," Mathematical Social Sciences, 93, 67–76, 2018, joint with F. Echenique and G. Tserenjigmid.
- "On Path Independent Stochastic Choice," Theoretical Economics, 13.1, 61–85, 2018 joint with D. Ahn and F. Echenique.
- "Response Time and Utility," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 139, 49–59, 2017, joint with F. Echenique.
- "Testing theories of financial decision making" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(15): 4003–4008,2016, joint with C. Chambers and F. Echenique.
- "Impure Altruism and Impure Selfishness," Journal of Economic Theory, 158, 336–370, 2015.
- "Savage in the Market," Econometrica, 83, 1467–1495, 2015, joint with F. Echenique.
- "Preferences for Flexibility and Randomization under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, 105:1246–1271, 2015.
- "Social Preferences under Risk," American Economic Review, 103, 3084–3101, 2013.
- "Strotz Meets Allais: Diminishing Impatience and the Certainty Effect: Comment," American Economics Review, 101, 2271–2275, 2011.
- "Testable Implication of Exponential Discounting and its Generalization," 2020, joint with F. Echenique and T. Imai, forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.
For more information on Professor Saito's published and forthcoming papers, please visit his website.
Working Papers
- "Repeated Choice: A Theory of Stochastic Intertemporal Preference" joint with J. Lu, Revise-and-resubmit at Theoretical Economics (1st Revision submitted).
- "Approximating Choice Data by Discrete Choice Models" with Y. Narita and Haoge Chang. Revise-and-resubmit at Management Science (1st Revision submitted).
- "Does Harold Zurcher Have Time Separable Preferences?" with Jay Lu, Yao, Luo, Yi Xin. Revise-and-resubmit at Journal of the European Economic Association (Preparing 1st Revision).
- "Random Utility with Aggregation Alternatives" with Yuexin Liao and Alec Sandroni. (Submitted)
- "I Choose for You: An Experimental Study" with Marina Agranov and Federico Echenique. (Submitted)
- "Decision Making under Uncertainty: An Experimental Study in Market Settings," joint with F. Echenique and T. Imai. Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics (Preparing 1st Revision)
- "Axiomatization of Mixed Logit Model," Caltech Social Science working paper 1433, 2017.
- "Mixed Logit and Pure Characteristic Models" with Jay Lu.
For more information on Professor Saito's working papers, please visit his website.