Rethinking common belief, revision, and backward induction

Patricia Rich

Mathematical Social Sciences, 2015, vol. 75, issue C, 102-114

Abstract: Whether rationality and common belief in rationality jointly entail the backward inductive outcome in centipede games has long been debated. Stalnaker’s compelling negative argument appeals to the AGM belief revision postulates to argue that off-path moves may be rational, given the revisions they may prompt. I counter that the structure of common belief and the principles of AGM justify an additional assumption about revision. I then prove that, given my proposed constraint, for all finite, n-player, extensive form, perfect information games with a unique backward inductive solution, if there is initial common belief in rationality, then backward induction is guaranteed.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165489615000207
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:matsoc:v:75:y:2015:i:c:p:102-114

DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2015.03.001

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematical Social Sciences is currently edited by J.-F. Laslier

More articles in Mathematical Social Sciences from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().