Published September 2005 | Version Submitted
Working Paper Open

Bayesian consistent prior selection

Abstract

A subjective expected utility agent is given information about the state of the world in the form of a set of possible priors. She is allowed to condition her prior on this information. A set of priors may be updated according to Bayes' rule, prior-by-prior, upon learning that some state of the world has not obtained. We show that there exists no decision maker who obeys Bayes' rule, conditions her prior on the available information (by selecting a prior in the announced set), and who updates the information prior-by- prior using Bayes' rule. The result implies that at least one of several familiar decision theoretic "paradoxes" is a mathematical necessity.

Additional Information

We would like to thank Kim Border, Federico Echenique, Larry Epstein, and Bill Zame for helpful discussions and comments. All errors are our own.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
79939
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20170808-133741084

Dates

Created
2017-08-09
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2020-03-09
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Social Science Working Papers
Series Name
Social Science Working Paper
Series Volume or Issue Number
1238