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Revealed Unawareness

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  • Burkhard Schipper

    (Department of Economics, University of California Davis)

Abstract

I develop awareness-dependent subjective expected utility by taking unawareness structures introduced in Heifetz, Meier, and Schipper (2006, 2008, 2009) as primitives in the Anscombe-Aumann approach to subjective expected utility. I observe that a decision maker is unaware of an event if and only if her choices reveal that the event is "null" and the negation of the event is "null". Moreover, I characterize "impersonal" expected utility that is behaviorally indistinguishable from awareness-dependent subject expected utility and assigns probability zero to some subsets of states that are not necessarily events. I discuss in what sense impersonal expected utility can not represent unawareness.

Suggested Citation

  • Burkhard Schipper, 2010. "Revealed Unawareness," Working Papers 303, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:303
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Dynamic unawareness and rationalizable behavior," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 50-68.
    2. Martin Meier & Burkhard Schipper, 2014. "Bayesian games with unawareness and unawareness perfection," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(2), pages 219-249, June.
    3. Spyros Galanis, 2013. "Unawareness of theorems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(1), pages 41-73, January.
    4. Martin Meier & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2014. "Speculative trade under unawareness: the infinite case," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(2), pages 147-160, October.
    5. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    6. Blume, Lawrence & Easley, David & Halpern, Joseph Y., 2021. "Constructive decision theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    7. Oliver Board, 2008. "Object-Based Unawareness: Theory and Applications," Working Paper 378, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Mar 2009.
    8. Simon Grant & John Quiggin, 2008. "Bounded rationality and small worlds," Risk & Uncertainty Working Papers WPR08_2, Risk and Sustainable Management Group, University of Queensland.
    9. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2008. "A canonical model for interactive unawareness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 304-324, January.
    10. Kim-Sau Chung & Oliver Board, 2007. "Object-Based Unawareness," Working Papers 2007-2, University of Minnesota, Department of Economics, revised 24 Aug 2007.
    11. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2006. "Interactive unawareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 78-94, September.
    12. Halpern, Joseph Y., 2001. "Alternative Semantics for Unawareness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 321-339, November.
    13. Li, Jing, 2009. "Information structures with unawareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 977-993, May.
    14. Eddie Dekel & Barton L. Lipman & Aldo Rustichini, 1998. "Standard State-Space Models Preclude Unawareness," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 159-174, January.
    15. Chew Soo Hong & Jacob S. Sagi, 2006. "Event Exchangeability: Probabilistic Sophistication Without Continuity or Monotonicity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(3), pages 771-786, May.
    16. Burkhard C. Schipper & Oliver Board & Kim-Sau Chung, 2009. "Two Models of Unawareness: Comparing the object-based and subjective-state-space approaches," Working Papers 149, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    17. Burkhard C. Schipper & Oliver Board & Kim-Sau Chung, 2009. "Two Models of Unawareness: Comparing the object-based and subjective-state-space approaches," Working Papers 93, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    18. Galanis, Spyros, 2007. "Unawareness of theorems," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 51816, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    19. Halpern, Joseph Y. & Rego, Leandro Chaves, 2008. "Interactive unawareness revisited," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 232-262, January.
    20. David S. Ahn & Haluk Ergin, 2010. "Framing Contingencies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(2), pages 655-695, March.
    21. , G. & , & ,, 2007. "Coarse contingencies and ambiguity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(4), December.
    22. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    23. Jing Li, 2008. "A Note on Unawareness and Zero Probability," PIER Working Paper Archive 08-022, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    24. Oliver Board & Kim-Sau Chung & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2008. "Two Models of Unawareness," Working Paper 379, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Mar 2009.
    25. Modica, Salvatore & Rustichini, Aldo, 1999. "Unawareness and Partitional Information Structures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 265-298, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unawareness; awareness; unforeseen contingencies; null; zero probability; subjective expected utility; Anscombe-Aumann; small worlds; extensionality of acts; event exchangeability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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