IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eth/wpswif/22-370.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Disagreement Aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine Bommier

    (Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH), ETH Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 18, 8032 Zürich, Switzerland)

  • Adrien Fabre

    (Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH), ETH Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 18, 8032 Zürich, Switzerland)

  • Arnaud Goussebaïle

    (Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH), ETH Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 18, 8032 Zürich, Switzerland)

  • Daniel Heyen

    (University of Kaiserslautern and ETH Zürich)

Abstract

Experts often disagree. A decision-maker may be averse to such expert disagreement. Existing models of aversion to expert disagreement rest on ambiguity-averse preferences adopting a unanimity principle: If all experts consider one choice better than another, so should the decision-maker. Such unanimity among experts, however, can be spurious, masking substantial disagreement on the underlying reasons. We introduce a novel notion of disagreement aversion to distinguish spurious from genuine unanimity and develop a model that can capture disagreement aversion in our sense. The central element of our model is the cautious aggregation of experts’ beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine Bommier & Adrien Fabre & Arnaud Goussebaïle & Daniel Heyen, 2022. "Disagreement Aversion," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 22/370, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
  • Handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:22-370
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-22-370.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marciano Siniscalchi, 2009. "Vector Expected Utility and Attitudes Toward Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 801-855, May.
    2. Robert F. Nau, 2006. "Uncertainty Aversion with Second-Order Utilities and Probabilities," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 136-145, January.
    3. Quiggin, John, 1982. "A theory of anticipated utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 323-343, December.
    4. Aurélien Baillon & Laure Cabantous & Peter Wakker, 2012. "Aggregating imprecise or conflicting beliefs: An experimental investigation using modern ambiguity theories," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 115-147, April.
    5. Richard P. Larrick & Jack B. Soll, 2006. "Intuitions About Combining Opinions: Misappreciation of the Averaging Principle," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 111-127, January.
    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. Yehuda Izhakian, 2012. "Ambiguity Measurement," Working Papers 12-01, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    2. Robin Cubitt & Gijs van de Kuilen & Sujoy Mukerji, 2020. "Discriminating Between Models of Ambiguity Attitude: a Qualitative Test," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 708-749.
    3. Aurélien Baillon & Zhenxing Huang & Asli Selim & Peter P. Wakker, 2018. "Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes for All (Natural) Events," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1839-1858, September.
    4. Amit Kothiyal & Vitalie Spinu & Peter Wakker, 2014. "An experimental test of prospect theory for predicting choice under ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 1-17, February.
    5. Andrew J. Keith & Darryl K. Ahner, 2021. "A survey of decision making and optimization under uncertainty," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 300(2), pages 319-353, May.
    6. Izhakian, Yehuda, 2017. "Expected utility with uncertain probabilities theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 91-103.
    7. Arthur E. Attema & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L'Haridon, 2018. "Ambiguity preferences for health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(11), pages 1699-1716, November.
    8. Karni, Edi & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2015. "Ambiguity and Nonexpected Utility," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    9. Adam Dominiak & Jean-Philippe Lefort, 2021. "Ambiguity and Probabilistic Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4310-4326, July.
    10. Jewitt, Ian & Mukerji, Sujoy, 2017. "Ordering ambiguous acts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 213-267.
    11. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Horst Zank, 2023. "Source and rank-dependent utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 949-981, May.
    12. Peter Klibanoff & Massimo Marinacci & Sujoy Mukerji, 2012. "On the Smooth Ambiguity Model: A Reply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(3), pages 1303-1321, May.
    13. He, Ying & Dyer, James S. & Butler, John C. & Jia, Jianmin, 2019. "An additive model of decision making under risk and ambiguity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 78-92.
    14. Gul, Faruk & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 2015. "Hurwicz expected utility and subjective sources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 465-488.
    15. Sujoy Mukerji & Peter Klibanoff and Kyoungwon Seo, 2011. "Relevance and Symmetry," Economics Series Working Papers 539, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    16. David Ahn & Syngjoo Choi & Douglas Gale & Shachar Kariv, 2014. "Estimating ambiguity aversion in a portfolio choice experiment," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5, pages 195-223, July.
    17. Blavatskyy, Pavlo R., 2013. "Two examples of ambiguity aversion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 206-208.
    18. Treich, Nicolas, 2010. "The value of a statistical life under ambiguity aversion," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 15-26, January.
    19. Ilke Aydogan & Loic Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2018. "Three layers of uncertainty: an experiment," Working Papers 623, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    20. Ilke AYDOGAN & Loïc BERGER & Valentina BOSETTI & Ning LIU, 2022. "Three layers of uncertainty," Working Papers 2022-iRisk-01, IESEG School of Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Disagreement Aversion; Ambiguity Aversion; Belief Aggregation; Decision under Uncertainty; Precautionary Principle;
    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
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    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:eth:wpswif:22-370. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwethch.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.