Certainty independence and the separation of utility and beliefs

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ghirardato, P; Maccheroni, F; Marinacci, M
• 署名单位: University of Turin; University of Turin; Bocconi University; Bocconi University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2004.01.002
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 129-134
• 关键词: certainty independence; separable representations; invariant biseparable preferences

摘要

Economists often operate under an implicit assumption that the tastes of a decision maker are quite stable, while his beliefs change with the availability of new information. We show that for a general class of preferences, a separation of a key component of tastes, the utility function, from the other components of the representation is possible only if the decision maker's preferences satisfy a mild but not completely innocuous condition, called 'certainty independence'. We also outline the axiomatic characterization of the preferences that obtain such separation, which are a subset of the biseparable preferences. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.