IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ubc/pmicro/halevy-04-02-13-07-48-37.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Feltkamp, Vincent
  • Halevy, Yoram

Abstract

The Ellsberg Paradox demonstrates that people's belief over uncertain events might not be representable by subjective probability. We show that if a risk averse decision maker, who has a well defined Bayesian prior, perceives an Ellsberg type decision problem as possibly composed of a bundle of several positively correlated problems - she will be uncertainty averse. We generalize this argument and derive sufficient conditions for uncertainty aversion.

Suggested Citation

  • Feltkamp, Vincent & Halevy, Yoram, 2004. "A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion," Microeconomics.ca working papers halevy-04-02-13-07-48-37, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 25 Feb 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:ubc:pmicro:halevy-04-02-13-07-48-37
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/yhalevy/HalevyFeltkampRES2005.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rakesh Sarin & Peter Wakker, 1997. "A Single-Stage Approach to Anscombe and Aumann's Expected Utility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(3), pages 399-409.
    2. Yaari, Menahem E, 1987. "The Dual Theory of Choice under Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 95-115, January.
    3. Segal, Uzi, 1987. "The Ellsberg Paradox and Risk Aversion: An Anticipated Utility Approach," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(1), pages 175-202, February.
    4. Sarin, Rakesh K & Wakker, Peter, 1992. "A Simple Axiomatization of Nonadditive Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(6), pages 1255-1272, November.
    5. Aumann, Robert J., 1997. "Rationality and Bounded Rationality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 21(1-2), pages 2-14, October.
    6. Gilboa, Itzhak, 1987. "Expected utility with purely subjective non-additive probabilities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 65-88, February.
    7. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    8. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    9. Camerer, Colin & Weber, Martin, 1992. "Recent Developments in Modeling Preferences: Uncertainty and Ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 325-370, October.
    10. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    11. Machina, Mark J & Schmeidler, David, 1992. "A More Robust Definition of Subjective Probability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(4), pages 745-780, July.
    12. Larry Epstein, 1997. "Uncertainty Aversion," Working Papers epstein-97-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    13. Hoffman, Elizabeth & McCabe, Kevin & Smith, Vernon L, 1996. "Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 653-660, June.
    14. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dillenberger, David & Segal, Uzi, 2017. "Skewed noise," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 344-364.
    2. Izhakian, Yehuda, 2017. "Expected utility with uncertain probabilities theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 91-103.
    3. Adam Dominiak & Jean-Philippe Lefort, 2021. "Ambiguity and Probabilistic Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4310-4326, July.
    4. Haluk Ergin & Faruk Gul, 2004. "A subjective theory of compound lotteries," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 152, Econometric Society.
    5. Shaw, W. Douglass & Woodward, Richard T., 2008. "Why environmental and resource economists should care about non-expected utility models," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 66-89, January.
    6. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Gulen, Huseyin & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2022. "Comparing ambiguous urns with different sizes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    7. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Horst Zank, 2023. "Source and rank-dependent utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 949-981, May.
    8. Nobuo Koida, 2012. "Nest-monotonic two-stage acts and exponential probability capacities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(1), pages 99-124, May.
    9. Umberto Cherubini, 1997. "Fuzzy measures and asset prices: accounting for information ambiguity," Applied Mathematical Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(3), pages 135-149.
    10. Ralf Diedrich, 2024. "Combining Savage and Laplace: a new approach to ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 423-453, November.
    11. Jewitt, Ian & Mukerji, Sujoy, 2017. "Ordering ambiguous acts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 213-267.
    12. Zvi Safra & Uzi Segal, 2005. "Are Universal Preferences Possible? Calibration Results for Non-Expected Utility Theories," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 633, Boston College Department of Economics.
    13. Dorian Jullien & Alexandre Truc, 2024. "Towards a History of Behavioral and Experimental Economics in France," GREDEG Working Papers 2024-23, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    14. Olivier L’Haridon & Lætitia Placido, 2010. "Betting on Machina’s reflection example: an experiment on ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 375-393, September.
    15. Evren, Özgür, 2019. "Recursive non-expected utility: Connecting ambiguity attitudes to risk preferences and the level of ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 285-307.
    16. Paolo Ghirardato & Massimo Marinacci, 2000. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Separation of Utility and Beliefs," Levine's Working Paper Archive 7616, David K. Levine.
    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. Paolo Ghirardato & Massimo Marinacci, 2001. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Separation of Utility and Beliefs," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 864-890, November.
    19. Ying He, 2021. "Revisiting Ellsberg’s and Machina’s Paradoxes: A Two-Stage Evaluation Model Under Ambiguity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 6897-6914, November.
    20. repec:awi:wpaper:0448 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ellsberg Paradox; rule rationality; ambiguity aversion; risk aversionm subjective probability; reduction of compound lotteries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:ubc:pmicro:halevy-04-02-13-07-48-37. 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: Maureen Chin (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.economics.ubc.ca/ .

    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.