Description-dependent preferences

We propose a theoretical perspective on framing effects where decision makers violate the axiom of description invariance. We first propose a framework that makes this axiom explicit and then we weaken it to allow for description dependence. This framework provides a structure to disentangle different violations of description invariance. We then identify a particular class of violations that we call tidy description-dependent preferences, which are compatible with a transitive preference relation over the consequences of the choice set. We show that many violations observed in the literature are actually in this class.