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Updating confidence in beliefs

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  • Hill, Brian

Abstract

This paper develops a belief update rule under ambiguity, motivated by the maxim: in the face of new information, retain those conditional beliefs in which you are more confident, and relinquish only those in which you have less confidence. We provide a preference-based axiomatisation, drawing on the account of confidence in beliefs developed in Hill (2013). The proposed rule constitutes a general framework of which several existing rules for multiple priors (Full Bayesian, Maximum Likelihood) are special cases, but avoids the problems that these rules have with updating on complete ignorance. Moreover, it can handle surprising and null events, such as crises or reasoning in games, recovering traditional approaches, such as conditional probability systems, as special cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Hill, Brian, 2022. "Updating confidence in beliefs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:199:y:2022:i:c:s0022053121000260
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105209
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Belief update; Ambiguity; Multiple priors; Confidence; Complete ignorance; Update on surprising or null events;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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