This chapter is a reprint of Frank P. Ramsey’s seminal paper “Truth and Probability” written in 1926 and first published posthumous in the 1931 The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays, ed. R.B. Braithwaite, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

/pdf/truth-and-probability-5agzcf3wsm.pdf

Truth and Probability

NEARLY EVERYONE would see the truth as between Hamlet and Puck. Including Hamlet and Puck. Hamlet is feigning madness, and Puck is just being, well, puckish. Model-writing economists, however, tend not to the middle but to the “infinite in faculties” extreme. Although the postulate of unbounded rationality has dominated economic modeling for several decades, the dominance is relaxing. Is this encouraging? Why bounded rationality? In this survey, four reasons are given for incorporating bounded rationality in economic models. First, there is abundant empirical evidence that it is important. Second, models of bounded rationality have proved themselves in a wide range of impressive work. Third, the standard justifications for assuming unbounded rationality are unconvincing; their logic cuts both ways. Fourth, deliberation about an economic decision is a costly activity, and good economics requires that we entertain all costs. These four reasons, or categories of reasons, are developed in the following four sections. Deliberation cost will be a recurring theme. Most references are to the last 15 years, though many earlier works are also cited. A longer version of the survey, including many more references, is available from the author on request.

Why Bounded Rationality

This paper proposes a new definition, and conceptual framework for social protection, grounded in social risk management. The concept repositions the traditional areas of social protection (labor market intervention, social insurance, and social safety nets) in a framework that includes three strategies to deal with risk (prevention, mitigation, and coping), three levels of formality of risk management (informal, market-based, public), and, many actors (individuals, households, communities, non-governmental organizations, governments at various levels, and international organizations) against the background of asymmetric information, and different types of risk. This expanded view of social protection emphasizes the double role of risk management instruments - protecting basic livelihood, as well as promoting risk taking. It focuses specifically on the poor, since they are the most vulnerable to risk, and typically lack appropriate risk management instruments, which constrains them from engaging in riskier, but also higher return activities, and hence gradually moving out of chronic poverty.

Social risk management : a new conceptual framework for social protection and beyond

Two-person Cooperative Games

A club is a voluntary group of individuals who derive mutual benefit from sharing one or more of the following: production costs, the members' characteristics, or a good characterized by excludable benefits. When production costs are shared and the good is purely private, a private good club is being analyzed (McGuire 1972; Wiseman 1957). If membership characteristics differ and motivate sharing, then membership fees will differ among members (DeSerpa 1977; Scotchmer 1994b; Scotchmer and Wooders 1987). Such fees are nonanonymous , inasmuch as a fee structure is related to the identity and attributes of a member. The focus of our analysis is the sharing of an excludable (rivalrous) public good, which we term a club good . Unless otherwise specified, crowding is assumed to be independent of the individual and hence anonymous. A number of aspects of the club definition deserve highlighting. Privately owned and operated clubs must be voluntary; members choose to belong because they anticipate a net benefit from membership. Thus, the utility jointly derived from membership and from the consumption of other goods must exceed the utility associated with nonmembership status. Furthermore, the net gain in utility from membership must exceed or equal membership fees or toll payments. This voluntarism serves as the first characteristic by which to distinguish between pure public goods and club goods. In the case of a pure public good, voluntarism may be absent, since the good might harm some recipients (e.g., defense to a pacifist, fluoridation to someone who opposes its use).

The theory of externalities, public goods, and club goods: Homogeneous clubs and local public goods

The concept of a non-extreme-outcome-additive capacity (neo-additive capacity ) is introduced. Neo-additive capacities model optimistic and pessimistic attitudes towards uncer-tainty as observed in many experimental studies. Moreover, neo-additive capacities can be applied easily in economic problems, as we demonstrate by examples. This paper provides an axiomatisation of Choquet expected utility with neo-capacities in a framework of purely subjective uncertainty.

Choice under Uncertainty with the Best and Worst in Mind: Neo-additive Capacities

http://static.luiss.it/hey/ambiguity/papers/Chateauneuf_Eichberger_Grant_2007.pdf

Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind : neo-additive capacities

Financial Economics

http://people.exeter.ac.uk/dk210/games-GEB-final.pdf

Non-additive beliefs and strategic equilibria

Introduces the game-theoretic approach of modelling economic behaviour and interaction, focusing on concepts and ideas from the field of game-theoretic models which find commonly used applications in economics. This book provides the reader with skills necessary to formalize economic games and to make them accessible for game theoretic analysis.

Jürgen Eichberger

Papers

Choice under Uncertainty with the Best and Worst in Mind: Neo-additive Capacities

Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind : neo-additive capacities

Financial Economics

Non-additive beliefs and strategic equilibria

Game theory for economists