An Evolutionary Perspective on Updating Risk and Ambiguity Preferences

Philipp Sadowski and Todd Sarver

American Economic Review: Insights, 2026, vol. 8, issue 2, 214-32

Abstract: Using an evolutionary approach, we address the prominent tension in the literature that updating of ambiguity and nonexpected-utility preferences cannot, in general, be both dynamically consistent and consequentialist. Perhaps not surprisingly, evolutionary optimality requires dynamic consistency. The more subtle insight is the evolutionary optimality of systematic violations of consequentialism. We base our investigation on the model of adaptive preferences (Sadowski and Sarver 2024), which generalizes the model of Robson (1996) and nests variants of many well-known models in the literature.

JEL-codes: B52 D11 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20240698

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