On average, “young” people underestimate whereas “old” people overestimate their chances to survive into the future. Such subjective survival beliefs violate the rational expectations paradigm and are also not in line with models of rational Bayesian learning. In order to explain these...

This paper develops a theoretical model for the formation of subjective beliefs on individual survival expectations. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) indicate that, on average, young respondents underestimate their true sur- vival probability whereas old respondents overestimate...

Abel (2002) proposes a resolution of the riskfree rate and the equity premium puzzles by considering pessimism and doubt. Pessimism is characterized by subjective probabilistic beliefs about consumption growth rates that are stochastically dominated by the objective distribution. The subjective...

For games with expected utility maximizing players whose strategy sets are finite, Pearce (1984) shows that a strategy is strictly dominated by some mixed strategy, if and only if, this strategy is not a best response to some belief about opponents' strategy choice. This note generalizes...

Based on the axiomatic framework of Choquet decision theory, we develop a closed-form model of Bayesian learning with ambiguous beliefs about the mean of a normal distribution. In contrast to rational models of Bayesian learning the resulting Choquet Bayesian estimator results in a long-run bias...

On average, "young" people underestimate whereas "old" people overestimate their chances to survive into the future. We parameterize a learning model of subjective survival beliefs with psychological biases such that we replicate these patterns. We then combine this learning model with an...

We combine new developments in decision theory with a standard consumption-based asset-pricing framework. In our model the efficient market hypothesis is violated if and only if agents' beliefs express ambiguity about the stochastic process driving economic fundamentals. Asset price fluctuations...

Why do people choose bank deposit contracts over a direct participation in asset markets? In their seminal paper, Diamond and Dybvig (1983) answer this question by claiming that bank deposit contracts can implement allocations that are welfare superior to asset markets equilibria. The present...

This paper models the empirical phenomenon of persistent fifty-fifty probability judgements within a dynamic non-additive Savage framework. To this purpose I construct a model of Bayesian learning such that an agent's probability judgement is characterized as the solution to a Choquet expected...