Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms¶
Ellsberg, D. (1961). Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 75(4), 643-669.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Expected Utility
- By the same token, the concept exposes when a decision rule departs from the benchmark: prospect theory's overweighting of small probabilities, the Allais paradox, and the Ellsberg ambiguity aversion are all defined and measured as precise deviations from the expected-utility baseline, which means the baseline supplies the very coordinate system in which irrationality becomes legible.
This sourceDemonstrates ambiguity aversion: choices over bets with unknown probabilities violate subjective expected utility, a precise deviation from the expected-utility/Savage baseline.
- By the same token, the concept exposes when a decision rule departs from the benchmark: prospect theory's overweighting of small probabilities, the Allais paradox, and the Ellsberg ambiguity aversion are all defined and measured as precise deviations from the expected-utility baseline, which means the baseline supplies the very coordinate system in which irrationality becomes legible.
- Risk Aversion
- Not identical to ambiguity aversion: Ellsberg's paradox (1961)
This sourceDemonstrates ambiguity aversion: choices over bets with unknown probabilities violate subjective expected utility, distinguishing ambiguity (unknown probabilities) from risk (known probabilities) — a deviation not captured by concavity of U alone.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Ellsberg's article asks whether there are uncertainties that are not risks, supporting the ambiguity/risk distinction; only its contents outline was readable.
“I. Are there uncertainties that are not risks? 643. — II. Uncertainties that are not risks, 647. — III. Why are some uncertainties not risks? — 656.”
- Not identical to ambiguity aversion: Ellsberg's paradox (1961)
- Uncertainty
- The Ellsberg paradox
This sourceDemonstrates ambiguity aversion: choices over bets with unknown probabilities violate subjective expected utility, a precise deviation from the expected-utility/Savage baseline.
- The Ellsberg paradox
Domain-specific¶
- Ambiguity Aversion
- Ambiguity aversion is the empirical regularity (Ellsberg, 1961) that people systematically prefer choices with known probability distributions over choices with unknown or imprecisely specified probability distributions, even when the known-probability option has no higher expected value.
This sourceEllsberg's two-urn stimulus - a bet on an urn whose red-black composition is known to be 50/50 against a bet on an urn of unknown composition - with the recorded choices of most subjects queried violating Savage's Sure-thing Principle. Ellsberg 1961 two-urn stimulus: one urn with an unknown red-black composition among 100 balls, the other holding exactly 50 red and 50 black. The text checked of Ellsberg's paper show that the two-urn choices imply contradictory probability judgments and that his urn patterns break Savage's axioms (the Sure-thing Principle or complete ordering); they do not name subjective expected-utility theory or tie the Sure-thing violation specifically to this two-urn case.
Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source
“Let us suppose that you confront two {{{urns}}} containing red and black balls”
- Ambiguity aversion is the empirical regularity (Ellsberg, 1961) that people systematically prefer choices with known probability distributions over choices with unknown or imprecisely specified probability distributions, even when the known-probability option has no higher expected value.
- Ellsberg Paradox
- Ellsberg's own two-urn thought experiment (1961) is the defining demonstration.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
“I. Are there uncertainties that are not risks? 643.”
- Ellsberg's own two-urn thought experiment (1961) is the defining demonstration.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 3 of 5 citations: 3 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Registry ID ref:155e8359aa83 · see in the full table