IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pen/papers/12-027.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Belief Formation, Second Version

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Compte

    (Paris School of Economics)

  • Andrew Postlewaite

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

Consider an agent who is unsure of the state of the world and faces computational bounds on mental processing. The agent receives a sequence of signals imperfectly correlated with the true state that he will use to take a single decision. The agent is assumed to have a finite number of "states of mind" that quantify his beliefs about the relative likelihood of the states, and uses the signals he receives to move from one state to another. At a random stopping time, the agent will be called upon to make a decision based solely on his mental state at that time. We show that under quite general conditions it is optimal that the agent ignore signals that are not very informative, that is, signals for which the likelihood of the states is nearly equal. This model provides a possible explanation of systematic inference mistakes people may make.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Compte & Andrew Postlewaite, 2009. "Belief Formation, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 12-027, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Jul 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:12-027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/filevault/12-027.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Jonathan A. Parker, 2005. "Optimal Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1092-1118, September.
    2. Rosenthal, Robert W., 1993. "Rules of thumb in games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-13, September.
    3. Roland Benabou & Jean Tirole, 2004. "Willpower and Personal Rules," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 848-886, August.
    4. Hvide, Hans K., 2002. "Pragmatic beliefs and overconfidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 15-28, May.
    5. Barton L. Lipman, 1995. "Information Processing and Bounded Rationality: A Survey," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(1), pages 42-67, February.
    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. Olivier Gossner & Jakub Steiner, 2016. "Optimal Illusion of Control and Related Perception Biases," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp571, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    2. Chatterjee, Kalyan & Hu, Tai-Wei, 2023. "Learning with limited memory: Bayesianism vs heuristics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).

    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. Gottlieb, Daniel, 2014. "Imperfect memory and choice under risk," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 127-158.
    2. Philippe Jehiel, 2022. "Analogy-Based Expectation Equilibrium and Related Concepts:Theory, Applications, and Beyond," Working Papers halshs-03735680, HAL.
    3. Augenblick, Ned & Cunha, Jesse M. & Dal Bó, Ernesto & Rao, Justin M., 2016. "The economics of faith: using an apocalyptic prophecy to elicit religious beliefs in the field," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 38-49.
    4. Alejandro Núnez Arroyo, 2018. "Information seeking with selective memory," Documentos CEDE 17131, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    5. Scott Duke Kominers & Xiaosheng Mu & Alexander Peysakhovich, 2019. "Paying for Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference," Working Papers 2019-31, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    6. Macera, Rosario, 2014. "Dynamic beliefs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-18.
    7. Caliendo, Frank & Huang, Kevin X.D., 2008. "Overconfidence and consumption over the life cycle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1347-1369, December.
    8. Hestermann, Nina & Le Yaouanq, Yves & Treich, Nicolas, 2020. "An economic model of the meat paradox," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    9. Chen, Si, 2012. "Optimistic versus Pessimistic--Optimal Judgemental Bias with Reference Point," MPRA Paper 50693, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Saucet, Charlotte & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2019. "Motivated memory in dictator games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 250-275.
    11. Hsiaw, Alice, 2013. "Goal-setting and self-control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 601-626.
    12. Elyès Jouini & Clotilde Napp, 2018. "The Impact of Health-Related Emotions on Belief Formation and Behavior," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(3), pages 405-427, May.
    13. Larbi Alaoui & Alvaro Sandroni, 2013. "Predestination and the Protestant ethic," Economics Working Papers 1350, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    14. Roland Bénabou, 2013. "Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 429-462.
    15. S. Nageeb Ali, 2011. "Learning Self-Control," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(2), pages 857-893.
    16. Eric Van den Steen, 2004. "Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1141-1151, September.
    17. Charlotte Saucet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2019. "Motivated memory in dictator games," Post-Print halshs-02193604, HAL.
    18. Klaus Nehring, 2006. "Self-Control through Second-Order Preferences," Levine's Bibliography 321307000000000391, UCLA Department of Economics.
    19. Shantanu Bagchi, 2011. "Can overconfidence explain the consumption hump?," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 35(1), pages 41-70, January.
    20. Dawson, Christopher & de Meza, David Emmanuel & Henley, Andrew & Arabsheibani, Reza, 2015. "The Power of (Non) Positive Thinking: Self-Employed Pessimists Earn More than Optimists," IZA Discussion Papers 9242, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decision Theory; Beliefs; Behavioral Economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:pen:papers:12-027. 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: Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupaus.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.