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Preference for Flexibility in a Savage Framework
Author(s) -
Nehring Klaus
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0262.00005
Subject(s) - stochastic dominance , axiom , mathematical economics , preference , flexibility (engineering) , expected utility hypothesis , economics , revealed preference , dominance (genetics) , preference theory , econometrics , microeconomics , mathematics , computer science , biochemistry , chemistry , geometry , management , gene
We study preferences over Savage acts that map states to opportunity sets and satisfy the Savage axioms. Preferences over opportunity sets may exhibit a preference for flexibility due to an implicit uncertainty about future preferences reflecting anticipated unforeseen contingencies. The main result of this paper characterizes maximization of the expected indirect utility in terms of an ‘Indirect Stochastic Dominance’ axiom that expresses a preference for ‘more opportunities in expectation.’ The key technical tool of the paper, a version of Möbius inversion, has been imported from the theory of nonadditive belief functions; it allows an alternative representation using Choquet integration, and yields a simple proof of Kreps' (1979) classic result.