Preference-Based Unawareness

Abstract:     
Morris (1996, 1997) introduced preference-based definitions of knowledge and belief in standard state-space structures. This paper extends this preference-based approach to unawareness structures (Heifetz, Meier, and Schipper, 2006, 2008). By defining unawareness and knowledge in terms of preferences over acts in unawareness structures and showing their equivalence to the epistemic notions of unawareness and knowledge, we try to build a bridge between decision theory and epistemic logic. Unawareness of an event is behaviorally characterized as the event being null and its negation being null.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 19

Keywords: Unawareness, awareness, knowledge, preferences, subjective expected utility theory, decision theory, null event

JEL Classification: C70, C72, D80, D82

working papers series