{"id":3946,"date":"2011-09-01T09:06:49","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T09:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/granthaminstitute\/?post_type=publication&#038;p=3946"},"modified":"2024-09-18T17:44:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T16:44:33","slug":"a-representation-result-for-choice-under-conscious-unawareness-working-paper-59","status":"publish","type":"publication","link":"https:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/granthaminstitute\/publication\/a-representation-result-for-choice-under-conscious-unawareness-working-paper-59\/","title":{"rendered":"A representation result for choice under conscious unawareness"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<?xml encoding=\"UTF-8\"><h3><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>There are many examples in policy-making, investment and day-to-day life where the set of contingencies the decision-maker can conceive of does not resolve all uncertainty about the consequences of actions. In such circumstances, the decision-maker may nevertheless&nbsp;reason that there exist certain aspects of the &lsquo;full&rsquo; state space of which she is unaware. That is, she may think it is possible she is unaware of something.<\/p>\n<p>We call this type of belief conscious unawareness and claim that its presence may lead to a violation of Savage&rsquo;s Sure Thing Principle. We then specify a choice setting in which the decision-maker has preferences over a set of actions stated naturally in English, but where the decision-maker also has preferences on the set of derivative actions, where a derivative action maps from the set of permutations &ndash; the product space of the set of contingencies she can conceive of (her subjective state space) and the set of payoff assignments to the actions &ndash; to a space of consequences.<\/p>\n<p>We obtain a representation result that makes choice in cases where conscious unawareness is a major concern tractable by means of some of the standard analytical tools of risk and ambiguity analysis. The representation also allows us to characterise the decision-maker&rsquo;s attitude towards perceived payoff&nbsp;uncertainty arising from factors she is unaware of, in particular we characterise ignorance aversion. Using the same framework, we are able to state a more general representation that allows us to capture source preference in examples where the decision-maker is consciously unaware.<\/p>\n<p><em>This is an update of a working paper originally published in 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<?xml encoding=\"UTF-8\"><p>Abstract There are many examples in policy-making, investment and day-to-day life where the set of contingencies the decision-maker can conceive&hellip;<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tags":[438,445],"publication-type":[435],"topic_area":[4694],"class_list":["post-3946","publication","type-publication","status-publish","hentry","tag-beliefs","tag-decision-making-under-uncertainty","publication-type-working-papers","topic_area-policy-evaluation"],"acf":{"downloads":{"ref_value":"field_52f16cc1a80f2","value":["https:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/granthaminstitute\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/working-paper-59-Walker-Dietz-Dec2018.pdf"],"type":"download","post_type":""},"profile_link":{"ref_value":"field_52f164b5189e9","value":["oliver-walker","simon-dietz"],"type":"relationship","post_type":"profile"},"spotlight":{"ref_value":"field_52f80896506d3","value":"","type":false,"post_type":""},"exclude_from_sync":{"ref_value":"field_560538b0e7350","value":"0","type":false,"post_type":""},"rss_newsletter":{"ref_value":"field_54f5c2c1544d8","value":"","type":false,"post_type":""},"show_translations_widget":{"ref_value":"field_6203d588c41e8","value":"0","type":false,"post_type":""}},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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