An Approach to Robust Decision Making: The Rationality of Heuristic Behavior

Markus Pasche

Working Paper Series B from Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, School of of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: Empirical studies show that decisions deviate from the predictions of expected utility theory and violate the axiomatic foundations. Hence, many generalizations to non-expected utility theory have been developped. But empirically they did not provide an improvement over the standard approach. In this paper random errors are integrated in an expected utility framework. Such errors occur when agents have limited information processing capacities. A performance criterion is provided to measure the expected success of behavioral strategies. A special class of robust decision rules and its properties are analyzed. It is argued that in case of bounded rationality the evolution will select heuristics from an open class of decision rules due to performance differences.

Keywords: (non-) expected utility; imprecise beliefs; behavioral strategies; performance; robustness; bounded rationality. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 D81 D83 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-06-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jen:jenavo:1998-10

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