Awareness of unawareness: A theory of decision making in the face of ignorance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Karni, Edi; Viero, Marie-Louise
• 署名单位: Johns Hopkins University; University of Warwick; Queens University - Canada
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2016.12.011
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 301-328
• 关键词: Awareness; unawareness; IGNORANCE; Reverse Bayesianism; Utility of indescribable consequences

摘要

In the wake of growing awareness, decision makers anticipate that they might acquire knowledge that, in their current state of ignorance, is unimaginable. Supposedly, this anticipation manifests itself in the decision makers' choice behavior. In this paper we model the anticipation of growing awareness, lay choice based axiomatic foundations to a subjective expected utility representation of beliefs about the likelihood of discovering unknown consequences, and assign utility to consequences that are not only unimaginable but may also be nonexistent. In so doing, we maintain the flavor of reverse Bayesianism of Karni and Viero (2013, 2015). (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.