The goal of this paper is to construct a user-friendly model of unawareness. We start from an axiom system (in first-order modal logic) that enables us to express the following kinds of sentences: “the agent is not sure whether or not there is anything that he is unaware of”, and “I am not sure whether or not you are aware of something that I am not”. We then prove a characterization theorem which describes a class of structures, called object-based unawareness structures, that correspond to this axiom system. As an application, we explain how an object-based unawareness structure can be use to model those American founding fathers who were opposed to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the constitution.
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Paper provided by University of Minnesota, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
2007-2.
Length: 30 pages Date of creation: 24 Aug 2007 Date of revision:
24 Aug 2007 Handle: RePEc:min:wpaper:2007-2
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Oliver Board & Kim-Sau Chung, 2006.
"Object-Based Unawareness,"
Working Papers
245, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2006.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Aviad Heifetz & Martin Meier & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2005.
"Interactive Unawareness,"
Discussion Papers
52, SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
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Other versions:
HEIFETZ, Aviad & MEIER, Martin & SCHIPPER, Burkhard C., 2004.
"Interactive unawareness,"
CORE Discussion Papers
2004059, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
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Ronald Fagin & Joseph Y. Halpern & Yoram Moses & Moshe Y. Vardi, 2003.
"Reasoning About Knowledge,"
MIT Press Books,
The MIT Press,
edition 1, volume 1, number 0262562006, January.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)