Awareness Of Unawareness: A Theory Of Decision Making In The Face Of Ignorance

Edi Karni and Marie-Louise Vierø

No 1322, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: In the wake of growing awareness, decision makers anticipate that they might acquire knowledge that, in their current state of ignorance, is unimaginable. Supposedly, this anticipation manifests itself in the decisionmakers' choice behavior. In this paper we model the anticipation of growing awareness, lay choice-based axiomatic foundations to a subjective expected utility representation of beliefs about the likelihood of discoveringunknown consequences, and assign utility to consequences that are not only unimaginable but may also be nonexistent. In so doing, we maintain the flavor of reverse Bayesianism of Karni and Vierø (2013, 2015).

Keywords: Awareness; Unawareness; Ignorance; Reverse Bayesianism; Utility of undescribable consequences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe, nep-mic and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1322.pdf First version 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Awareness of unawareness: A theory of decision making in the face of ignorance (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1322

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