IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2202.10121.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Dutch book argument for belief consistency

Author

Listed:
  • Emiliano Catonini

Abstract

An agent progressively learns about a state of the world. A bookmaker is ready to offer one bet after every new discovery. I say that the agent is Dutch-booked when she is willing to accept every single bet, but her expected payoff is negative under each state, where the expected payoff is computed with the objective probabilities of different discoveries conditional on the state. I introduce a rule of coherence among beliefs after counterfactual discoveries that is necessary and sufficient to avoid being Dutch-booked. This rule characterizes an agent who derives all her beliefs with Bayes rule from the same Lexicographic Conditional Probability System (Blume, Brandenburger and Dekel, 1991).

Suggested Citation

  • Emiliano Catonini, 2022. "A Dutch book argument for belief consistency," Papers 2202.10121, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2202.10121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.10121
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Battigalli, P. & Catonini, E. & Manili, J., 2023. "Belief change, rationality, and strategic reasoning in sequential games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 527-551.
    2. Lawrence Blume & Adam Brandenburger & Eddie Dekel, 2014. "Lexicographic Probabilities and Choice Under Uncertainty," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Language of Game Theory Putting Epistemics into the Mathematics of Games, chapter 6, pages 137-160, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Emiliano Catonini, 2022. "The Epistemic Spirit of Divinity," Working Papers 681, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Emiliano Catonini, 2022. "The Epistemic Spirit of Divinity," Working Papers 681, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    2. Hammond, Peter J., 1999. "Non-Archimedean subjective probabilities in decision theory and games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 139-156, September.
    3. Di Tillio, Alfredo & Halpern, Joseph Y. & Samet, Dov, 2014. "Conditional belief types," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 253-268.
    4. Asheim, Geir & Søvik, Ylva, 2003. "The semantics of preference-based belief operators," Memorandum 05/2003, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    5. Ken Binmore, "undated". "Rationality and Backward Induction," ELSE working papers 047, ESRC Centre on Economics Learning and Social Evolution.
    6. Burkhard Schipper & Martin Meier & Aviad Heifetz, 2017. "Comprehensive Rationalizability," Working Papers 174, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    7. Peter A. Streufert, 2006. "Products of Several Relative Probabilities," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 20061, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    8. Asheim, Geir B. & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2003. "Admissibility and common belief," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 208-234, February.
    9. Giacomo Bonanno & Cédric Dégremont, 2013. "Logic and Game Theory," Working Papers 11, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    10. Heifetz Aviad & Meier Martin & Schipper Burkhard C., 2021. "Prudent Rationalizability in Generalized Extensive-form Games with Unawareness," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(2), pages 525-556, June.
    11. Asheim, G.B. & Dufwenberg, M., 1996. "Admissibility and Common Knowledge," Discussion Paper 1996-16, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    12. Catonini, Emiliano & De Vito, Nicodemo, 2024. "Cautious belief and iterated admissibility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    13. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & David Schmeidler, 2004. "Rationality of Belief Or: Why Savage's axioms are neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 03 Jan 2007.
    14. Charles F. Manski, 2008. "Partial Prescriptions For Decisions With Partial Knowledge," NBER Working Papers 14396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Klaus Nehring, 2006. "Decision-Making in the Context of Imprecise Probabilistic Beliefs," Economics Working Papers 0034, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    16. Karni, Edi, 2010. "Red herrings: Some thoughts on the meaning of zero-probability events and mathematical modeling," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 134-135, May.
    17. Mailath, George J. & Samuelson, Larry & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 1997. "How Proper Is Sequential Equilibrium?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 193-218, February.
    18. Asheim, Geir B., 2002. "On the epistemic foundation for backward induction," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 121-144, November.
    19. Tsakas, Elias, 2014. "Epistemic equivalence of extended belief hierarchies," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 126-144.
    20. Bade, Sophie, 2011. "Ambiguous act equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 246-260, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2202.10121. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.