Symmetric Expected Utility

Jurek Preker
Additional contact information
Jurek Preker: Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University

No 761, Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers from Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University

Abstract: We investigate and axiomatize preferences that display indifference between deterministic states, but exhibit strict orderings over lotteries over these states. Such preferences might be due to the ability to adopt to states, or a (dis)taste for uncertainty. We derive a representation theorem for preferences that are symmetric—that is, a decision maker is indifferent between a lottery and its permutations over the set of states—, continuous, and satisfy a weakened version of independence. We then describe when these preferences exhibit a taste or distaste for uncertainty. Finally, we characterize pairs of lotteries for which every uncertainty-averse decision maker prefers one of the lotteries over the other one.

Keywords: Expected Utility; Induced Preferences; Mixture Aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2026-01-28
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/download/3013521/3013522 First Version, 2026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bie:wpaper:761

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers from Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bettina Weingarten ().