IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/3794.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Iterated Expectations, Compact Spaces and Common Priors

Author

Listed:
  • Hellman, Ziv

Abstract

Extending to infinite state spaces that are compact metric spaces a result previously attained by Dov Samet solely in the context of finite state spaces, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a common prior for several players is given in terms of the players’ present beliefs only. A common prior exists if and only if for each random variable it is common knowledge that all its iterated expectations with respect to any permutation converge to the same value; this value is its expectation with respect to the common prior. It is further shown that the restriction to compact metric spaces is ‘natural’ when semantic type spaces are derived from syntactic models, and that compactness is a necessary condition. Many proofs are based on results from the theory of Markov chains.

Suggested Citation

  • Hellman, Ziv, 2007. "Iterated Expectations, Compact Spaces and Common Priors," MPRA Paper 3794, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:3794
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3794/1/MPRA_paper_3794.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/8733/1/MPRA_paper_8733.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Samet, Dov, 1998. "Common Priors and Separation of Convex Sets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 172-174, July.
    2. Samet, Dov, 2000. "Quantified Beliefs and Believed Quantities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 169-185, December.
    3. Aumann, Robert J, 1987. "Correlated Equilibrium as an Expression of Bayesian Rationality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 1-18, January.
    4. Milgrom, Paul & Stokey, Nancy, 1982. "Information, trade and common knowledge," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 17-27, February.
    5. Heifetz, Aviad, 2006. "The positive foundation of the common prior assumption," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 105-120, July.
    6. Robert J. Aumann, 1998. "Common Priors: A Reply to Gul," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 929-938, July.
    7. Feinberg, Yossi, 2000. "Characterizing Common Priors in the Form of Posteriors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 127-179, April.
    8. Giacomo Bonanno & Klaus Nehring, 1999. "How to make sense of the common prior assumption under incomplete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 28(3), pages 409-434.
    9. Morris, Stephen, 1994. "Trade with Heterogeneous Prior Beliefs and Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(6), pages 1327-1347, November.
    10. Samet, Dov, 1998. "Iterated Expectations and Common Priors," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 131-141, July.
    11. Nehring, Klaus, 2004. "The veil of public ignorance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 247-270, December.
    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. Jonathan Libgober, 2021. "Identifying Wisdom (of the Crowd): A Regression Approach," Papers 2105.07097, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    2. Benjamin Golub & Stephen Morris, 2020. "Expectations, Networks, and Conventions," Papers 2009.13802, arXiv.org.
    3. Satoshi Fukuda, 2024. "On the consistency among prior, posteriors, and information sets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(2), pages 521-565, September.
    4. Ziv Hellman, 2014. "Countable spaces and common priors," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(1), pages 193-213, February.
    5. Lehrer, Ehud & Samet, Dov, 2014. "Belief consistency and trade consistency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 165-177.

    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. Dekel, Eddie & Siniscalchi, Marciano, 2015. "Epistemic Game Theory," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. Satoshi Fukuda, 2024. "On the consistency among prior, posteriors, and information sets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(2), pages 521-565, September.
    3. Lehrer, Ehud & Samet, Dov, 2014. "Belief consistency and trade consistency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 165-177.
    4. Guarino, Pierfrancesco & Tsakas, Elias, 2021. "Common priors under endogenous uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    5. Klaus Nehring, 2003. "Common Priors For Like-Minded Agents," Economics Working Papers 0035, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    6. Heifetz, Aviad, 2006. "The positive foundation of the common prior assumption," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 105-120, July.
    7. Lipman, Barton L., 2010. "Finite order implications of common priors in infinite models," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 56-70, January.
    8. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    9. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    10. Ziv Hellman, 2014. "Countable spaces and common priors," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(1), pages 193-213, February.
    11. Halpern, Joseph Y., 2002. "Characterizing the Common Prior Assumption," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 316-355, October.
    12. Feinberg, Yossi, 2000. "Characterizing Common Priors in the Form of Posteriors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 127-179, April.
    13. Hellwig, Martin, 2022. "Incomplete-information games in large populations with anonymity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(1), January.
    14. Chen, Yi-Chun & Lehrer, Ehud & Li, Jiangtao & Samet, Dov & Shmaya, Eran, 2015. "Agreeing to agree and Dutch books," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 108-116.
    15. R. J. Aumann & J. H. Dreze, 2005. "When All is Said and Done, How Should You Play and What Should You Expect?," Discussion Paper Series dp387, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    16. Marco Scarsini & Yossi Feinberg, 2003. "Rate of Arbitrage and Reconciled Beliefs," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(11), pages 1-12.
    17. Zimper, Alexander, 2009. "Half empty, half full and why we can agree to disagree forever," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 283-299, August.
    18. Rodrigues-Neto, José Alvaro, 2012. "The cycles approach," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 207-211.
    19. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:11:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Rodrigues-Neto, José Alvaro, 2009. "From posteriors to priors via cycles," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 876-883, March.
    21. Barelli, Paulo, 2009. "Consistency of beliefs and epistemic conditions for Nash and correlated equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 363-375, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    common priors; Markov chains; type spaces; iterated expectations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:pra:mprapa:3794. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.