IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bie/wpaper/737.html

The Empirical Content of Expected Utility

Author

Listed:
  • Mononen, Lasse

    (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University)

Abstract

We characterize the empirical content of expected utility. We show that the empirical content of the expected utility theory is contained in completeness, transitivity, and strong independence axioms. However, under commonly used weaker forms of independence axiom, the continuity adds empirical content in the expected utility theory. This formalizes and makes exact the ubiquitous claim that the continuity axiom is a technical axiom without empirical content in the expected utility theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Mononen, Lasse, 2025. "The Empirical Content of Expected Utility," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 737, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    • Handle: RePEc:bie:wpaper:737
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/download/3006172/3006173
    File Function: First Version, 2024
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher P. Chambers & Federico Echenique & Eran Shmaya, 2014. "The Axiomatic Structure of Empirical Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2303-2319, August.
    2. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierpaolo Angelini, 2023. "Probability Spaces Identifying Ordinal and Cardinal Utilities in Problems of an Economic Nature: New Issues and Perspectives," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-22, October.
    2. Hansen, Lars Peter & Sargent, Thomas J., 2022. "Structured ambiguity and model misspecification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    3. Rhys Bidder & Ian Dew-Becker, 2016. "Long-Run Risk Is the Worst-Case Scenario," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2494-2527, September.
    4. Hansen, Lars Peter, 2013. "Uncertainty Outside and Inside Economic Models," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-7, Nobel Prize Committee.
    5. Michael Woodford, 2010. "Robustly Optimal Monetary Policy with Near-Rational Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 274-303, March.
    6. Zhi Chen & Melvyn Sim & Huan Xu, 2019. "Distributionally Robust Optimization with Infinitely Constrained Ambiguity Sets," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 1328-1344, September.
    7. Gajdos, Thibault & Maurin, Eric, 2004. "Unequal uncertainties and uncertain inequalities: an axiomatic approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 93-118, May.
    8. Castro, Luciano de & Galvao, Antonio F. & Kim, Jeong Yeol & Montes-Rojas, Gabriel & Olmo, Jose, 2022. "Experiments on portfolio selection: A comparison between quantile preferences and expected utility decision models," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    9. Jürgen Eichberger & Simon Grant & David Kelsey, 2012. "When is ambiguity–attitude constant?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 239-263, December.
    10. Luca De Gennaro Aquino & Sascha Desmettre & Yevhen Havrylenko & Mogens Steffensen, 2024. "Equilibrium control theory for Kihlstrom-Mirman preferences in continuous time," Papers 2407.16525, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    11. Thibaut Mastrolia & Dylan Possamaï, 2018. "Moral Hazard Under Ambiguity," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 452-500, November.
    12. Simona Fabrizi & Steffen Lippert & Addison Pan & Matthew Ryan, 2022. "A theory of unanimous jury voting with an ambiguous likelihood," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 399-425, October.
    13. Ji, Ronglin & Shi, Xuejun & Wang, Shijie & Zhou, Jinming, 2019. "Dynamic risk measures for processes via backward stochastic differential equations," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 43-50.
    14. Cerreia-Vioglio, Simone & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo & Montrucchio, Luigi, 2012. "Probabilistic sophistication, second order stochastic dominance and uncertainty aversion," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 271-283.
    15. ,, 2014. "Second order beliefs models of choice under imprecise risk: non-additive second order beliefs vs. nonlinear second order utility," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    16. Kiyohiko G. Nishimura & Hiroyuki Ozaki, 2001. "Search under the Knightian Uncertainty," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-112, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    17. Dräger, Lena & Lamla, Michael J. & Pfajfar, Damjan, 2020. "The Hidden Heterogeneity of Inflation and Interest Rate Expectations: The Role of Preferences," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-666, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, revised Feb 2023.
    18. James K. Hammitt, 2020. "Valuing mortality risk in the time of COVID-19," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 129-154, October.
    19. André Lapied & Thomas Rongiconi, 2013. "Ambiguity as a Source of Temptation: Modeling Unstable Beliefs," Working Papers halshs-00797631, HAL.
    20. Federica Ceron & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2020. "Recursive objective and subjective multiple priors," Post-Print halshs-02900497, HAL.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bie:wpaper:737. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bettina Weingarten (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imbiede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.