- A BAYESIAN APPROACH TO UNCERTAINTY AVERSION

Vincent Feltkamp and Yoram Halevy

Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: The Ellsberg paradox demonstrates that peoples belief over uncertainevents might not be representable by subjective probability. We relate this paradox to other commonly observed anomalies, suchas a rejection of the backward induction prediction in the one-shot Ultimatum Game. We argue that the pattern common to theseobservations is that the behavior is governed by rational rules. These rules have evolved and are optimal within the repeated andconcurrent environments that people usually encounter. When an individual relies on these rules to analyzeone-shot or single circumstances, paradoxes emerge. We show that when a risk averse individualhas a Bayesian prior and uses a rule which is optimal for simultaneous and positively correlatedambiguous risks to evaluate a single vague circumstance, his behavior will exhibit uncertaintyaversion. Thus, the behavior predicted by Ellsberg may be explained within the Bayesian expectedutility paradigm.

Keywords: Ellsberg paradox; rule rationality; ambiguity aversion; risk aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 1999-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published by Ivie

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http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-1999-14.pdf Fisrt version / Primera version, 1999 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion (2014)
Journal Article: A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion (2005)
Working Paper: A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion (2000)
Working Paper: A Bayesian Approach to Uncentainty Aversion
Working Paper: A Bayesian Approach to Uncentainty Aversion
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ivi:wpasad:1999-14

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