Disagreement Aversion

Abstract

Experts often disagree. A decision-maker may be averse to such expert disagreement. Existing models of aversion to expert disagreement rest on ambiguity-averse preferences adopting a unanimity principle: If all experts consider one choice better than another, so should the decision-maker. Such unanimity among experts, however, can be spurious, masking substantial disagreement on the underlying reasons. We introduce a novel notion of disagreement aversion to distinguish spurious from genuine unanimity and develop a model that can capture disagreement aversion in our sense. The central element of our model is the cautious aggregation of experts’
beliefs.

Keywords: Disagreement Aversion, Ambiguity Aversion, Belief Aggregation, Decision under Uncertainty, Precautionary Principle

JEL Classification: D81, D83, D71