IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jhu/papers/523.html

Subjective Expected Utility Theory without States of the World

Author

Listed:
  • Edi Karni

Abstract

This paper develops an axiomatic theory of decision making under uncertainty that dispenses with the state space. The results are subjective expected utility models with unique, action-dependent, subjective probabilities, and a utility function defined over wealth-effect pairs that is unique up to positive linear transformation.

Suggested Citation

  • Edi Karni, 2005. "Subjective Expected Utility Theory without States of the World," Economics Working Paper Archive 523, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:jhu:papers:523
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ2.jhu.edu/REPEC/papers/wp523karni.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilboa,Itzhak & Schmeidler,David, 2001. "A Theory of Case-Based Decisions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521802345, January.
    2. Wakker, Peter, 1987. "Subjective probabilities for state dependent continuous utility," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 289-298, December.
    3. Chambers,Robert G. & Quiggin,John, 2000. "Uncertainty, Production, Choice, and Agency," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521622448, January.
    4. Luce, R Duncan & Krantz, David H, 1971. "Conditional Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(2), pages 253-271, March.
    5. Itzhak Gilboa & David Schmeidler, 2004. "Subjective Distributions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 345-357, January.
    6. Costis Skiadas, 1997. "Conditioning and Aggregation of Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(2), pages 347-368, March.
    7. Itzhak Gilboa, 1993. "Hempel, Good and Bayes," Discussion Papers 1045, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    8. James A. Mirrlees, 1976. "The Optimal Structure of Incentives and Authority Within an Organization," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 105-131, Spring.
    9. Karni Edi, 1993. "Subjective Expected Utility Theory with State-Dependent Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 428-438, August.
    10. Karni, Edi, 2007. "Foundations of Bayesian theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 167-188, January.
    11. Karni, Edi, 1996. "Probabilities and Beliefs," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 249-262, November.
    12. Oliver Hart & Bengt Holmstrom, 1986. "The Theory of Contracts," Working papers 418, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agastya, Murali & Slinko, Arkadii, 2015. "Dynamic choice in a complex world," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PA), pages 232-258.
    2. Martin Dumav, 2021. "Moral Hazard, Dynamic Incentives, and Ambiguous Perceptions," Papers 2110.15229, arXiv.org.
    3. Blume, Lawrence & Easley, David & Halpern, Joseph Y., 2021. "Constructive decision theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    4. Edi Karni, 2008. "Agency theory: choice-based foundations of the parametrized distribution formulation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(3), pages 337-351, September.
    5. Urmee Khan & Martin Dumav, 2018. "Moral Hazard, Uncertain Technologies, and Linear Contracts," Working Papers 201806, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    6. Dumav, Martin & Khan, Urmee, 2018. "Moral hazard with non-additive uncertainty: When are actions implementable?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 110-114.
    7. Dino Borie, 2016. "Expected Multi-Utility Representations by "Simplex" with Applications," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-10, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    8. Edi Karni, 2007. "Bayesian Decision Theory and the Representation of Beliefs," Discussion Paper Series dp444, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    9. Pope, Robin & Leitner, Johannes & Leopold-Wildburger, Ulrike, 2009. "Expected utility versus the changes in knowledge ahead," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 199(3), pages 892-901, December.
    10. Edi Karni, 2009. "A Theory of Bayesian Decision Making," EIEF Working Papers Series 0904, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised May 2009.
    11. Edi Karni, 2005. "A New Approach to Modeling Decision-Making under Uncertainty and Defining Subjective Probabilities," Economics Working Paper Archive 519, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    12. Karni, Edi, 2009. "A reformulation of the maxmin expected utility model with application to agency theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 97-112, January.
    13. Svetlana Boyarchenko & Sergei Levendorskii, 2005. "Discount factors ex post and ex ante, and discounted utility anomalies," Microeconomics 0510013, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 Dec 2005.
    14. Grant, Simon & Quiggin, John, "undated". "Learning and Discovery," Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers 151174, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    15. Vassili Vergopoulos, 2011. "Dynamic consistency for non-expected utility preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(2), pages 493-518, October.
    16. Pope, Robin, 2006. "Multiple Periods Destroy the Axiomatic Base of Expected Utility Theory and its Standard Generalisations," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 30/2006, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    17. Edi Karni, 2011. "A theory of Bayesian decision making with action-dependent subjective probabilities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(1), pages 125-146, September.
    18. Edi Karni, 2009. "A theory of medical decision making under uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 1-16, August.

    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. Karni, Edi, 2007. "Foundations of Bayesian theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 167-188, January.
    2. Drapeau, Samuel & Jamneshan, Asgar, 2016. "Conditional preference orders and their numerical representations," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 106-118.
    3. Thibault Gajdos & Feriel Kandil, 2008. "The ignorant observer," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 193-232, August.
    4. Edi Karni, 2008. "Agency theory: choice-based foundations of the parametrized distribution formulation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(3), pages 337-351, September.
    5. Samuel Drapeau & Asgar Jamneshan, 2014. "Conditional Preference Orders and their Numerical Representations," Papers 1410.5466, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2016.
    6. Edi Karni, 2007. "Bayesian Decision Theory and the Representation of Beliefs," Discussion Paper Series dp444, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    7. Skiadas, Costis, 1997. "Subjective Probability under Additive Aggregation of Conditional Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 242-271, October.
    8. Brian Hill, 2009. "Living without state-independence of utilities," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 67(4), pages 405-432, October.
    9. Karni, Edi, 2005. "Subjective expected utility theory with costly actions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 28-41, January.
    10. Edi Karni, 2009. "A Theory of Bayesian Decision Making," EIEF Working Papers Series 0904, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised May 2009.
    11. Peter P. Wakker & Sylvia J. T. Jansen & Anne M. Stiggelbout, 2004. "Anchor Levels as a New Tool for the Theory and Measurement of Multiattribute Utility," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 1(4), pages 217-234, December.
    12. Thibault Gajdos Preuss & Feriel Kandil, 2008. "The ignorant observer," Post-Print halshs-00177374, HAL.
    13. Parton, Kevin A., 2009. "Agricultural Decision Analysis: The Causal Challenge," 2009 Conference (53rd), February 11-13, 2009, Cairns, Australia 48150, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    14. George Georgiadis & Balazs Szentes, 2020. "Optimal Monitoring Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 2075-2107, September.
    15. Edi Karni, 2013. "Bayesian decision theory with action-dependent probabilities and risk attitudes," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 53(2), pages 335-356, June.
    16. Barron, Daniel & Georgiadis, George & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2020. "Optimal contracts with a risk-taking agent," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    17. Berrada, Tony & Detemple, Jérôme & Rindisbacher, Marcel, 2018. "Asset pricing with beliefs-dependent risk aversion and learning," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(3), pages 504-534.
    18. Hamed Hamze Bajgiran & Houman Owhadi, 2021. "Aggregation of Models, Choices, Beliefs, and Preferences," Papers 2111.11630, arXiv.org.
    19. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & Larry Samuelson & David Schmeidler, 2019. "What are axiomatizations good for?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(3), pages 339-359, May.
    20. Edi Karni, 2011. "A theory of Bayesian decision making with action-dependent subjective probabilities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(1), pages 125-146, September.

    More about this item

    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:jhu:papers:523. 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: Humphrey Muturi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dejhuus.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.