IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/not/notcdx/2022-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reverse Bayesianism and Act Independence

Author

Listed:
  • Surajeet Chakravarty

    (University of Exeter)

  • David Kelsey

    (Nottingham University Business School)

  • Joshua C. Teitelbaum

    (Georgetown University)

Abstract

Karni and Viero (2013) propose a model of belief revision under growing awareness— - reverse Bayesianism - which posits that as a person becomes aware of new acts, consequences, or act-consequence links, she revises her beliefs over an expanded state space in a way that preserves the relative likelihoods of events in the original state space. A key feature of the model is that reverse Bayesianism does not fully determine the revised probability distribution. We provide an assumption— - act independence - that imposes additional restrictions on reverse Bayesian belief revision. We show that with act independence knowledge of the probabilities of the new act events in the expanded state space is sufficient to fully determine the revised probability distribution in each case of growing awareness. We also explore what additional knowledge is required for reverse Bayesianism to pin down the revised probabilities without act independence.

Suggested Citation

  • Surajeet Chakravarty & David Kelsey & Joshua C. Teitelbaum, 2022. "Reverse Bayesianism and Act Independence," Discussion Papers 2022-06, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    • Handle: RePEc:not:notcdx:2022-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cedex/documents/papers/cedex-discussion-paper-2022-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dekel, Eddie & Lipman, Barton L. & Rustichini, Aldo, 1998. "Recent developments in modeling unforeseen contingencies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 523-542, May.
    2. Karni Edi & Valenzuela-Stookey Quitzé & Vierø Marie-Louise, 2021. "Reverse Bayesianism: A Generalization," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(2), pages 557-569, June.
    3. Karni, Edi & Vierø, Marie-Louise, 2017. "Awareness of unawareness: A theory of decision making in the face of ignorance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 301-328.
    4. Modica, Salvatore & Rustichini, Aldo, 1999. "Unawareness and Partitional Information Structures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 265-298, May.
    5. Eddie Dekel & Barton L. Lipman & Aldo Rustichini, 1998. "Standard State-Space Models Preclude Unawareness," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 159-174, January.
    6. Halpern, Joseph Y., 2001. "Alternative Semantics for Unawareness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 321-339, November.
    7. Edi Karni & Marie-Louise Vier?, 2013. ""Reverse Bayesianism": A Choice-Based Theory of Growing Awareness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2790-2810, December.
    8. Edi Karni & Marie-Louise Vierø, 2015. "Probabilistic sophistication and reverse Bayesianism," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 189-208, June.
    9. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2006. "Interactive unawareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 78-94, September.
    10. Dominiak, Adam & Tserenjigmid, Gerelt, 2018. "Belief consistency and invariant risk preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 157-162.
    11. Burkhard Schipper, 2014. "Unawareness - A Gentle Introduction to both the Literature and the Special Issue," Working Papers 145, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    12. Christopher P. Chambers & Takashi Hayashi, 2018. "Reverse Bayesianism: A Comment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 315-324, February.
    13. Simon Grant & Idione Meneghel & Rabee Tourky, 2022. "Learning under unawareness," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(2), pages 447-475, September.
    14. Burkhard Schipper, 2014. "Unawareness - A Gentle Introduction to both the Literature and the Special Issue," Working Papers 153, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    15. Halpern, Joseph Y. & Rego, Leandro Chaves, 2008. "Interactive unawareness revisited," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 232-262, January.
    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. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2024. "Predicting the Unpredictable under Subjective Expected Utility," Papers 2403.01421, arXiv.org.

    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. Dominiak, Adam & Tserenjigmid, Gerelt, 2022. "Ambiguity under growing awareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    2. Becker, Christoph K. & Melkonyan, Tigran & Proto, Eugenio & Sofianos, Andis & Trautmann, Stefan T., 2020. "Reverse Bayesianism: Revising Beliefs in Light of Unforeseen Events," IZA Discussion Papers 13821, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Surajeet Chakravarty & David Kelsey & Joshua C. Teitelbaum, 2020. "Operationalizing Reverse Bayesianism," Discussion Papers 2020-18, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    4. Áron Tóbiás, 2023. "Cognitive limits and preferences for information," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 46(1), pages 221-253, June.
    5. Karni, Edi & Vierø, Marie-Louise, 2017. "Awareness of unawareness: A theory of decision making in the face of ignorance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 301-328.
    6. Gaia Belardinelli & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2023. "Implicit Knowledge in Unawareness Structures," Working Papers 360, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    7. Perea, Andrés, 2022. "Common belief in rationality in games with unawareness," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 11-30.
    8. Zimper, Alexander, 2009. "An epistemic model of an agent who does not reflect on reasoning processes," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 290-309, November.
    9. Grant Simon & Guerdjikova Ani & Quiggin John, 2021. "Ambiguity and Awareness: A Coherent Multiple Priors Model," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(2), pages 571-612, June.
    10. Adam Dominiak & Ani Guerdjikova, 2021. "Pessimism and optimism towards new discoveries," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 321-370, May.
    11. Dietrich, Franz, 2018. "Savage's theorem under changing awareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 1-54.
    12. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2024. "Predicting the Unpredictable under Subjective Expected Utility," Papers 2403.01421, arXiv.org.
    13. Surajeet Chakravarty & David Kelsey & Joshua C. Teitelbaum, 2018. "Tort Liability and Unawareness," Discussion Papers 1801, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    14. Heinsalu, Sander, 2014. "Universal type structures with unawareness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 255-266.
    15. Oliver Walker, 2011. "Unawareness with �possible� possible worlds," GRI Working Papers 69, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    16. Fukuda, Satoshi, 2021. "Unawareness without AU Introspection," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    17. Burkhard Schipper, 2013. "Awareness-dependent subjective expected utility," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 725-753, August.
    18. Pintér, Miklós & Udvari, Zsolt, 2011. "Generalized type spaces," MPRA Paper 34107, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Spyros Galanis, 2013. "Unawareness of theorems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(1), pages 41-73, January.
    20. Halpern, Joseph Y. & Rêgo, Leandro C., 2013. "Reasoning about knowledge of unawareness revisited," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 73-84.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Keywords: act independence; reverse Bayesianism; unawareness;
    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

    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:not:notcdx:2022-06. 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: Jose V Guinot Saporta (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdnotuk.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.