Abstract
Experimental evidence strongly suggests that subjects facing a decision under uncertainty often find it difficult to assess the relative likelihood of certain events; decision theorists deem such events ‘ambiguous’. Furthermore, subjects generally dislike options (acts) whose final outcome depends upon the realization of such ambiguous events; that is, they are ‘ambiguity-averse’. This article surveys the main decision-theoretic models developed since the mid-1980s to accommodate ambiguity and ambiguity aversion, including Choquet-expected utility (Schmeidler. Econometrica 57: 571–87, 1989) and maxmin expected utility (Gilboa and Schmeidler. J Math Econ 18: 141–53, 1989). More recent developments in the theory of ambiguity are also briefly summarized.
Keywords
- Ambiguity
- Ambiguity aversion
- Bernoulli utility function
- Choice under uncertainty
- Choquet-expected utility
- Decision theory
- Decision weights
- Ellsberg paradox
- Incomplete preferences
- Maximum likelihood
- Maxmin expected utility
- Multiple priors
- Preference reversals
- Probability
- Savage, L
- Second-order probabilities
- Subjective expected utility
- Sure-thing principle
- von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function
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Siniscalchi, M. (2018). Ambiguity and Ambiguity Aversion. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2439
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2439
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