Redzo Mujcic from QUT's School of Economics & Finance has passed confirmation as a PHD Candidate. Redzo continues his studies on relativity of utility & migration:  

Abstract:

Much of neoclassical microeconomic theory focuses on economic agents who are assumed to be maximising utility, or profits, or some other conventional economic goal such as wealth. In society, however, agents appear to pursue the ill-defined, but rather well understood goal of ‘status'. Loosely stated, we can think of ‘status' as an individual's position or rank within a group or society relative to others, often explicitly labelled (at the top end) as ‘King', ‘Judge', or ‘Nobel Laureate'. In this research, we further explore the role of relativity in utility theory. More specifically, we desire to model the labour migration decision-making process as a game of utility maximisation across rational economic agents (players) who respond (employ strategies) to relative positional incentives (status/ordinal rank) over and above the neoclassical measures. We aim to solve this model for selected cases and use simulations to describe the generic characteristics of the general case. Empirical analysis is employed to identify individuals who are more likely to be rank maximisers.