Subjective Probability without Monotonicity: Or How Machina's Mom May Also Be Probabilistically Sophisticated.

If an agent's preferences over subjectively uncertain acts are consistent with him having a subjective probability distribution over the states of nature, then those preferences can induce consistent preferences over 'objectively' risky lotteries. Such 'probabilistically sophisticated' behavior allows us to treat decision making under uncertainty as though it is under risk. This paper first characterizes exactly what probabilistic sophistication entails for an agent's beliefs about the likelihood of states of nature. Secondly, it presents characterizations of probabilistically sophisticated individuals whose induced lottery preferences obey neither the independence axiom nor a monotonicity property that is shown to share some of the nature of independence. Copyright 1995 by The Econometric Society.