Savage for dummies and experts

Mohammed Abdellaoui and Peter Wakker

Journal of Economic Theory, 2020, vol. 186, issue C

Abstract: Savage's foundation of expected utility is considered to be the most convincing justification of Bayesian expected utility and the crowning glory of decision theory. It combines exceptionally appealing axioms with deep mathematics. Despite the wide influence and deep respect that Savage received in economics and statistics, virtually no one touched his mathematical tools. We provide an updated analysis that is more general and more accessible. Our derivations are self-contained. This helps to better appreciate the depth and beauty of Savage's work and the foundations of Bayesianism, to teach it more easily, and to develop non-Bayesian generalizations incorporating ambiguity more efficiently.

Keywords: Subjective expected utility; Behavioral foundation; Mixture spaces; Foundations of statistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C02 C60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053120300016
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jetheo:v:186:y:2020:i:c:s0022053120300016

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2020.104991

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Theory is currently edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell

More articles in Journal of Economic Theory from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().