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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Risky Curves: From Unobservable Utility To Observable Opportunity Sets, Daniel Friedman, Shyam Sunder
Risky Curves: From Unobservable Utility To Observable Opportunity Sets, Daniel Friedman, Shyam Sunder
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Most theories of risky choice postulate that a decision maker maximizes the expectation of a Bernoulli (or utility or similar) function. We tour 60 years of empirical search and conclude that no such functions have yet been found that are useful for out-of-sample prediction. Nor do we find practical applications of Bernoulli functions in major risk-based industries such as finance, insurance and gambling. We sketch an alternative approach to modeling risky choice that focuses on potentially observable opportunities rather than on unobservable Bernoulli functions.
Intergenerational Justice When Future Worlds Are Uncertain, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre
Intergenerational Justice When Future Worlds Are Uncertain, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Suppose that there exists a positive (exogenous) probability that at each date of a possibly infinite future, the human species will disappear. We postulate an Ethical Observer (EO) who must solve an intertemporal welfare maximization problem under this kind of uncertainty, with preferences that satisfy the expected utility hypothesis. Various social welfare criteria are expressed as alternative von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions for the EO: utilitarianism, Rawlsianism, and an extension of the latter that corrects for the size of population. Our analysis covers, first, a simple cake-eating economy, where the utilitarian and Rawlsian recommend the same intergenerational allocation. Second, we consider …
Subjective Distributions, Itzhak Gilboa, David Schmeidler
Subjective Distributions, Itzhak Gilboa, David Schmeidler
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A decision maker has to choose one of several random variables, with uncertainty known distributions. As a Bayesian she behaves as if she knew the distributions. In his paper we suggest an axiomatic derivation of these (subjective) distributions, which is much more economical than the derivations by de Finetti or Savage. They derive the whole joint distribution of all the available random variables.
A Derivation Of Expected Utility Maximization In The Context Of A Game, Itzhak Gilboa, David Schmeidler
A Derivation Of Expected Utility Maximization In The Context Of A Game, Itzhak Gilboa, David Schmeidler
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A decision maker faces a decision problem, or a game against nature. For each probability distribution over the state of the world (nature’s strategies), she has a weak order over her acts (pure strategies). We formulate conditions on these weak orders guaranteeing that they can be jointly represented by expected utility maximization with respect to an almost-unique state-dependent utility, that is, a matrix assigning real numbers to act-state pairs. As opposed to a utility function that is derived in another context, the utility matrix derived in the game will incorporate all psychological or sociological determinants of well-being that result from …
Expected Utility Theory Without The Completeness Axiom, Juan Dubra, Fabio Maccheroni, Efe A. Ok
Expected Utility Theory Without The Completeness Axiom, Juan Dubra, Fabio Maccheroni, Efe A. Ok
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We study axiomatically the problem of obtaining an expected utility representation for a potentially incomplete preference relation over lotteries by means of a set of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions. It is shown that, when the prize space is a compact metric space, a preference relation admits such a multi-utility representation provided that it satisfies the standard axioms of expected utility theory. Moreover, the representing set of utilities is unique in a well-defined sense.