Quantitative Economics

Journal Of The Econometric Society

Edited by: Stéphane Bonhomme • Print ISSN: 1759-7323 • Online ISSN: 1759-7331

Quantitative Economics: Jul, 2023, Volume 14, Issue 3

Ellsberg meets Keynes at An Urn

https://doi.org/10.3982/QE2253
p. 1133-1162

Soo Hong Chew, Bin Miao, Songfa Zhong

Keynes (1921) and Ellsberg (1961) have articulated an aversion toward betting on an urn containing balls of two colors of unknown proportion to one with a 50–50 composition. Keynes views this as reflecting different preferences for bets arising from different sources of uncertainty. Ellsberg describes this as weighting the priors arising from the unknown urn pessimistically. In two experiments, we observe substantial links between attitude toward almost‐objective uncertainty and attitudes toward multiple‐prior uncertainties in terms of ambiguity and its corresponding compound risk. Our findings point to a shared component across domains of uncertainty and motivate the need for further theoretical development.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Ellsberg meets Keynes at An Urn"

Soo Hong Chew, Bin Miao, and Songfa Zhong

This zip file contains the replication files for the manuscript.

Supplement to "Ellsberg meets Keynes at An Urn"

Soo Hong Chew, Bin Miao, and Songfa Zhong

This online appendix contains material not found within the manuscript.

Supplement to "Ellsberg meets Keynes at An Urn"

Soo Hong Chew, Bin Miao, and Songfa Zhong

The experimental instructions.