The rationality and efficacy of decisions under uncertainty and the value of an experiment (*)

B-Tier
Journal: Economic Theory
Year: 1997
Volume: 9
Issue: 2
Pages: 309-324

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

A decision maker faces a known prior distribution over payoff relevant states. We compare the expected utility of this individual under two scenarios. In the first, the decision maker makes a choice without further information. In the second, the decision maker has access to an experiment before choosing an action. However, the decision maker does not know the true joint distribution over states and messages. The value of the experiment as measured by the difference in the two utility levels can be negative as well as positive. We give a condition which is necessary and sufficient for the experiment to be valuable in our sense, for any decision problem.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:spr:joecth:v:9:y:1997:i:2:p:309-324
Journal Field
Theory
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-26