Coherent Distorted Beliefs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chambers, Christopher P., Masatlioglu, Yusufcan, Raymond, Collin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Chambers, Christopher P.
Masatlioglu, Yusufcan
Raymond, Collin
author_facet Chambers, Christopher P.
Masatlioglu, Yusufcan
Raymond, Collin
contents Many models of economics assume that individuals distort objective probabilities. We propose a simple consistency condition on distortion functions, which we term distortion coherence, that ensures that the function commutes with conditioning on an event. We show that distortion coherence restricts belief distortions to have a particular function form: power-weighted distortions, where distorted beliefs are proportional to the original beliefs raised to a power and weighted by a state-specific value. We generalize our findings to allow for distortions of the probabilities assigned to both states and signals, which nests the functional forms widely used in studying probabilistic biases (e.g., Grether, 1980 and Benjamin, 2019). We show how coherent distorted beliefs are tightly related to several extant models of motivated beliefs: they are the outcome of maximizing anticipated expected utility subject to a generalized Kullback-Liebler cost of distortion. Moreover, in the domain of lottery choice, we link coherent distortions to explanations of non-expected utility like the Allais paradox: individuals who maximize subjective expected utility maximizers conditional on coherent distorted beliefs are equivalent to the weighted utility maximizers studied by Chew [1983].
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_09879
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Coherent Distorted Beliefs
Chambers, Christopher P.
Masatlioglu, Yusufcan
Raymond, Collin
Theoretical Economics
Many models of economics assume that individuals distort objective probabilities. We propose a simple consistency condition on distortion functions, which we term distortion coherence, that ensures that the function commutes with conditioning on an event. We show that distortion coherence restricts belief distortions to have a particular function form: power-weighted distortions, where distorted beliefs are proportional to the original beliefs raised to a power and weighted by a state-specific value. We generalize our findings to allow for distortions of the probabilities assigned to both states and signals, which nests the functional forms widely used in studying probabilistic biases (e.g., Grether, 1980 and Benjamin, 2019). We show how coherent distorted beliefs are tightly related to several extant models of motivated beliefs: they are the outcome of maximizing anticipated expected utility subject to a generalized Kullback-Liebler cost of distortion. Moreover, in the domain of lottery choice, we link coherent distortions to explanations of non-expected utility like the Allais paradox: individuals who maximize subjective expected utility maximizers conditional on coherent distorted beliefs are equivalent to the weighted utility maximizers studied by Chew [1983].
title Coherent Distorted Beliefs
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.09879