A measure of behavioral heterogeneity

Abstract

In this paper we propose a novel way to measure behavioral heterogeneity in a population of stochastic individuals. Our measure is choice-based; it evaluates the probability that, over a sampled menu, the sampled choices of two sampled individuals differ. We provide axiomatic foundations for this measure, and a decomposition result that separates heterogeneity into its intra- and inter-personal components.