Revealed Preference

A person’s actual choices — not their stated beliefs or intentions — are the most reliable evidence of what they truly value. Formalized by economist Paul Samuelson in 1938 as a neoclassical demand-theory tool. The closer Austrian-school analogue is Murray Rothbard’s demonstrated preference, developed to argue, in line with praxeology, that only observed action — not verbal claims — can establish someone’s true preferences.