IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nwu/cmsems/1531.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Observability and “Second-Order Acts"

Author

Listed:
  • Nabil I. Al-Najjar
  • Luciano De Castro

Abstract

This note questions the behavioral content of second-order acts and their use in decision theoretic models. We show that there can be no verification mechanism to determine what the decision maker receives under a second-order act. This impossibility applies even in idealized repeated experiments where infinite data can be observed. JEL Classification Numbers:

Suggested Citation

  • Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Luciano De Castro, 2010. "Observability and “Second-Order Acts"," Discussion Papers 1531, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:1531
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/alnajjar/htm/page2/assets/Observability.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tomasz Strzalecki, 2011. "Axiomatic Foundations of Multiplier Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 47-73, January.
    2. Robert F. Nau, 2006. "Uncertainty Aversion with Second-Order Utilities and Probabilities," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 136-145, January.
    3. Chew, Soo Hong & Sagi, Jacob S., 2008. "Small worlds: Modeling attitudes toward sources of uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 1-24, March.
    4. Sujoy Mukerji & Peter Klibanoff and Kyoungwon Seo, 2011. "Relevance and Symmetry," Economics Series Working Papers 539, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. Kyoungwon Seo, 2009. "Ambiguity and Second-Order Belief," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1575-1605, September.
    6. Ergin, Haluk & Gul, Faruk, 2009. "A theory of subjective compound lotteries," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 899-929, May.
    7. Peter Klibanoff & Massimo Marinacci & Sujoy Mukerji, 2005. "A Smooth Model of Decision Making under Ambiguity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1849-1892, November.
    8. Simon Grant & Ben Polak & Tomasz Strzalecki, "undated". "Second-Order Expected Utility," Working Paper 8340, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    9. William Neilson, 2010. "A simplified axiomatic approach to ambiguity aversion," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 113-124, October.
    10. Yoram Halevy, 2007. "Ellsberg Revisited: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(2), pages 503-536, March.
    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. Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Luciano De Castro, 2010. "Prediction Markets to Forecast Electricity Demand," Discussion Papers 1529, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    2. Mark Schneider & Manuel Nunez, 2016. "Mean-Dispersion Preferences with a Specific Dispersion Function," Working Papers 16-10, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    3. Nunez, Manuel & Schneider, Mark, 2019. "Mean-dispersion preferences with a specific dispersion function," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 195-206.

    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. Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Luciano De Castro, 2010. "Prediction Markets to Forecast Electricity Demand," Discussion Papers 1529, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    2. Cerreia-Vioglio, Simone & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo & Montrucchio, Luigi, 2013. "Ambiguity and robust statistics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 974-1049.
      • Simone Cerreia-Vioglio & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & Luigi Montrucchio, 2011. "Ambiguity and Robust Statistics," Working Papers 382, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    3. Victor Filipe Martins da Rocha & Rafael Mouallem, 2020. "Second-Order Beliefs and Second-Order Expected Utility," Working Papers hal-02922263, HAL.
    4. Hui Chen & Nengjiu Ju & Jianjun Miao, 2014. "Dynamic Asset Allocation with Ambiguous Return Predictability," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(4), pages 799-823, October.
    5. Beggs, Alan, 2021. "Games with second-order expected utility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 569-590.
    6. Massimo Marinacci, 2015. "Model Uncertainty," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(6), pages 1022-1100, December.
    7. Li, Jian & Zhou, Junjie, 2016. "Blackwell's informativeness ranking with uncertainty-averse preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 18-29.
    8. Craig S. Webb, 2017. "Purely subjective variational preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 64(1), pages 121-137, June.
    9. Karni, Edi & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2015. "Ambiguity and Nonexpected Utility," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    10. Jewitt, Ian & Mukerji, Sujoy, 2017. "Ordering ambiguous acts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 213-267.
    11. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Peter Klibanoff & Lætitia Placido, 2015. "Experiments on Compound Risk in Relation to Simple Risk and to Ambiguity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1306-1322, June.
    12. He, Ying & Dyer, James S. & Butler, John C. & Jia, Jianmin, 2019. "An additive model of decision making under risk and ambiguity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 78-92.
    13. Ilke Aydogan & Loic Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2018. "Three layers of uncertainty: an experiment," Working Papers 623, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    14. Ilke Aydogan & Loïc Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2023. "Three Layers of Uncertainty," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(5), pages 2209-2236.
    15. Keyu Wu & Ernst Fehr & Sean Hofland & Martin Schonger, 2024. "On the Psychological Foundations of Ambiguity and Compound Risk Aversion," CESifo Working Paper Series 11150, CESifo.
    16. Yoram Halevy & Emre Ozdenoren, 2022. "Uncertainty and compound lotteries: calibration," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(2), pages 373-395, September.
    17. König-Kersting, Christian & Kops, Christopher & Trautmann, Stefan T., 2023. "A test of (weak) certainty independence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    18. Izhakian, Yehuda, 2017. "Expected utility with uncertain probabilities theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 91-103.
    19. Mark Schneider & Manuel Nunez, 2016. "Mean-Dispersion Preferences with a Specific Dispersion Function," Working Papers 16-10, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    20. Arthur E. Attema & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L'Haridon, 2018. "Ambiguity preferences for health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(11), pages 1699-1716, November.

    More about this item

    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:nwu:cmsems:1531. 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: Fran Walker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmnwuus.html .

    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.