Abstract
Suppose that a group of experts are asked to express their preference rankings on a set of uncertain prospects and that all of them satisfy the economist’s standard requisite of Bayesian rationality. Suppose also that there is another individual who attempts to summarize the experts’ preference judgments into a single ranking. What conditions should the observer’s ranking normatively be expected to satisfy? A natural requirement to impose is that it be Paretian, i.e., it should respect unanimously expressed preferences over pairs of prospects. Another condition which appears to be desirable is that the observer’s and the experts’ rankings should conform to one and the same decision theory, i.e., the observer himself should be Bayesian. The next question is then, are these seemingly compelling normative assumptions compatible with each other?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Anscombe, F.G. and R.J. Aumann, 1963, A definition of subjective probability, Annals of Mathematical Statistics 34, 199–205.
d’Aspremont, C., 1985, Axioms for social welfare orderings, in: L. Hurwicz, D. Schmeidler, H. Sonnenschein, eds., Social goals and social organization ( Cambridge, C.U.P. ) 19–76.
Broome, J., 1990, Bolker-Jeffrey expected utility theory and axiomatic utilitarianism, Review of Economic Studies 57, 477–502.
Coulhon, T. and P. Mongin, 1989, Social choice theory in the case of von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities, Social Choice and Welfare 6, 175–187.
de Finetti, B., 1974–75, Theory of probability (New York, Wiley, 2 volumes).
De Meyer, B. and P. Mongin, 1995, A note on affine aggregation, Economics Letters 47, 177–183.
Drèze, J., 1987, Essays on economic decisions under uncertainty ( Cambridge, C.U.P.).
Fishbum, P.C., 1970, Utility theory for decision making ( New York, Wiley).
Fishbum, P.C., 1982, The foundations of expected utility ( Dordrecht, Reidel).
Goodman, J., 1988, Existence of compromises in simple group decisions, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Carnegie-Mellon University).
Hammond, P.J., 1982, Ex-ante and ex-post welfare optimality under uncertainty, Economica 48, 235–250.
Hammond, P.J., 1983, Ex-post optimality as a dynamically consistent objective for collective choice under uncertainty, in: P.K. Pattanaik and M. Salles, eds., Social choice and welfare ( Amsterdam, North Holland ).
Hammond, P.J., 1998, Subjective expected utility theory, in: S. Barbera, P. Hammond, and C. Seidl, Handbook of utility theory ( Dordrecht, Kluwer).
Harsanyi, J.C., 1955, Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility, Journal of Political Economy 63, 309–321.
Karni, E., 1985, Decision making under uncertainty: the case of state-dependent preferences ( Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press).
Kami, E., 1993, A definition of subjective probabilities with state-dependent preferences, Econometrica 61, 187–198.
Kami, E. and D. Schmeidler, 1993, On the uniqueness of subjective probabilities, Economic Theory 3, 267–277.
Kami et al.,1983] Kami, E., D. Schmeidler and K. Vind, 1983, On state-dependent preferences and subjective probabilities, Econometrica 51, 1021–1031.
Levi, I., 1990, Pareto unanimity and consensus, Journal of Philosophy 87.
Mongin, R, 1995, Consistent bayesian aggregation, Journal of Economic Theory 66, 313–351.
Mongin, P., 1997, Spurious unanimity and the Pareto principle, paper presented at the conference “Utilitarianism Reconsidered” ( New Orleans, March 1997 ).
Savage, L.J., 1972, The foundations of statistics, (New York, Dover, 1st edition, 1954 ).
Schervish, M.J.,T. Seidenfeld and J.B. Kadane, 1990, State-dependent utilities, Journal of the American Statistical Association 85, 840–847.
Schervish, M.J., T. Seidenfeld and J.B. Kadane, 1991, Shared preferences and state-dependent utilities, Management Science 37, 1575–1589.
Seidenfeld, T., J.B. Kadane and M.J. Schervish, 1989, On the shared preferences of two Bayesian decision makers, Journal of Philosophy 86, 225–244.
Wakker, R, 1987, Subjective probabilities for state-dependent continuous utility, Mathematical Social Sciences 14, 289–298.
Weymark, J.A., 1993, Harsanyi’s social aggregation theorem and the weak Pareto principle, Social Choice and Welfare 10, 209–222.
Zhou, L., 1996, Bayesian utilitarianism, CORE Discussion Paper 9611 (Universit Catholique de Louvain).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mongin, P. (2001). The Paradox of the Bayesian Experts. In: Corfield, D., Williamson, J. (eds) Foundations of Bayesianism. Applied Logic Series, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1586-7_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1586-7_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5920-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-1586-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive