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The Evolutionary Stability of Optimism, Pessimism and Complete Ignorance

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  • Schipper, Burkhard C.

Abstract

We provide an evolutionary foundation to evidence that in some situations humans maintain optimistic or pessimistic attitudes towards uncertainty and are ignorant to relevant aspects of the environment. Players in strategic games face Knightian uncertainty about opponents' actions and maximize individually their Choquet expected utility. Our Choquet expected utility model allows for both an optimistic or pessimistic attitude towards uncertainty as well as ignorance to strategic dependencies. An optimist (resp. pessimist) overweights good (resp. bad) outcomes. A complete ignorant never reacts to opponents' change of actions. With qualifications we show that optimistic (resp. pessimistic) complete ignorance is evolutionary stable / yields a strategic advantage in submodular (resp. supermodular) games with aggregate externalities. Moreover, this evolutionary stable preference leads to Walrasian behavior in those classes of games.

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  • Schipper, Burkhard C., 2005. "The Evolutionary Stability of Optimism, Pessimism and Complete Ignorance," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 35/2005, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bonedp:352005
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    1. Martin Jensen, 2010. "Aggregative games and best-reply potentials," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(1), pages 45-66, April.
    2. Péter Bayer & Ani Guerdjikova, 2020. "Optimism leads to optimality: Ambiguity in network formation," Working Papers hal-03005107, HAL.
    3. Guarino, Pierfrancesco & Ziegler, Gabriel, 2022. "Optimism and pessimism in strategic interactions under ignorance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 559-585.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    ambiguity; Knightian uncertainty; Choquet expected utility; neo-additive capacity; Hurwicz criterion; Maximin; Minimax; Ellsberg paradox;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

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