IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/cesdoc/20015rrr.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decision Under Normative Uncertainty

Author

Abstract

While ordinary decision theory focuses on empirical uncertainty, real decision-makers also normative uncertainty: uncertainty about value itself. From a purely formal perspective, normative uncertainty is comparable to (Harsanyian or Rawlsian) identity uncertainty in the 'original position', where one's future values are unknown. A comprehensive decision theory must address twofold uncertainty - normative and empirical. We present a simple model of twofold uncertainty, and show that the most popular decision principle - maximising expected value ('Expectationalism') - has different formulations, namely Ex-Ante Expectationalism, Ex-Post Expectationalism, and hybrid theories. These alternative theories recommend different decisions, reasoning modes, and attitudes to risk. But they converge under an interesting (necessary and sufficient) condition

Suggested Citation

  • Franz Dietrich & Brian Jabarian, 2020. "Decision Under Normative Uncertainty," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 20015rrr, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, revised Sep 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:20015rrr
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2020/20015RRR.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ex-ante versus ex-post approach; expectationalism; excepted value theory; normative versus; empirical uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:mse:cesdoc:20015rrr. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Lucie Label (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cenp1fr.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.