Revising Beliefs in Light of Unforeseen Events

Christoph K Becker, Tigran Melkonyan, Eugenio Proto, Andis Sofianos and Stefan T Trautmann

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2026, vol. 24, issue 2, 661-700

Abstract: Bayesian updating is the dominant theory of learning. However, the theory is silent about how individuals react to events that were previously unforeseen. We study how decision-makers update their beliefs if unforeseen events materialize, and under which conditions they revise their views about previously observed relationships. We base our analysis on the framework of “reverse Bayesianism,” under which the relative likelihoods of prior beliefs remain unchanged after an unforeseen event materializes. We find that participants do not systematically deviate from reverse Bayesianism when the unforeseen changes result in a new world that contains elements of the old world. In contrast, if a regime change is possible, decision-makers eventually overhaul their model of the old world in favor of a completely different view of uncertainty.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvaf038 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:jeurec:v:24:y:2026:i:2:p:661-700.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().