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Contingent preference for flexibility: eliciting beliefs from behavior

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    (Department of Economics, Duke University)

Abstract

Following Kreps (1979), I consider a decision maker who is uncertain about her future taste. This uncertainty leaves the decision maker with a preference for flexibility: When choosing among menus containing alternatives for future choice, she weakly prefers menus with additional alternatives. Standard representations accommodating this choice pattern cannot distinguish tastes (indexed by a subjective state space) and beliefs (a probability measure over the subjective states) as different concepts. I allow choice between menus to depend on objective states. My axioms provide a representation that uniquely identifies beliefs, provided objective states are sufficiently relevant for choice. I suggest this result as a choice theoretic foundation for the assumption, commonly made in the (incomplete) contracting literature, that contracting parties who know each others' ranking of contracts, also share beliefs about each others' future tastes in the face of unforeseen contingencies.

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  • ,, 2013. "Contingent preference for flexibility: eliciting beliefs from behavior," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(2), May.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:884
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Laureti, Carolina & Szafarz, Ariane, 2023. "Banking regulation and costless commitment contracts for time-inconsistent agents," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    2. Karni, Edi & Safra, Zvi, 2016. "A theory of stochastic choice under uncertainty," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 164-173.
    3. Riella, Gil, 2013. "Preference for Flexibility and Dynamic Consistency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2467-2482.
    4. Schenone, Pablo, 2016. "Identifying subjective beliefs in subjective state space models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 59-72.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Preference for flexibility; unique beliefs; unforeseen contingencies; incomplete contracts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

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