 ANTICIPATED UTILITY AND RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS AS APPROXIMATIONS OF BAYESIAN DECISION MAKINGTimothy Cogley (tim.cogley@nyu.edu) and Thomas Sargent International Economic Review, 2008, vol. 49, issue 1, 185-221 Abstract: We study a Markov decision problem with unknown transition probabilities. We compute the exact Bayesian decision rule and compare it with two approximations. The first is an infinite-history, rational-expectations approximation that assumes that the decision maker knows the transition probabilities. The second is a version of Kreps' anticipated-utility model in which decision makers update using Bayes' law but optimize in a way that is myopic with respect to their updating of probabilities. For several consumption-smoothing examples, the anticipated-utility approximation outperforms the rational expectations approximation. The rational expectations approximation misrepresents the market price of risk. Copyright 2008 by the Economics Department Of The University Of Pennsylvania And Osaka University Institute Of Social And Economic Research Association. Date: 2008 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ier:iecrev:v:49:y:2008:i:1:p:185-221 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article International Economic Review is currently edited by Harold L. Cole More articles in International Economic Review from Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association 160 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6297. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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