Theoretical Economics 17 (2022), 507–519
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What were you thinking? Decision theory as coherence test
Itzhak Gilboa, Larry Samuelson
Abstract
Decision theory can be used to test the logic of decision making---one may ask whether a given set of decisions can be justified by a decision-theoretic model. Indeed, in principal-agent settings, such justifications may be required---a manager of an investment fund may be asked what beliefs she used when valuing assets and a government may be asked whether a portfolio of rules and regulations is coherent. In this paper we ask which collections of uncertain-act evaluations can be simultaneously justified under the maxmin expected utility criterion by a single set of probabilities. We draw connections to the the Fundamental Theorem of Finance (for the special case of a Bayesian agent) and revealed-preference results.
Keywords: Decision theory, revealed preference, coherence, maxmin expected utility
JEL classification: D8
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