Comparative Statics for the Subjective
Theoretical Economics
2025-05-27 v3
Abstract
I study robust comparative statics for risk-averse subjective expected utility (SEU) maximizers. Starting with a finite menu of actions totally ordered by sensitivity to risk, I identify the transformations of her menu that lead a decision-maker to take a lower action, regardless of her particular utility function or belief. My main results reveal that a robust decrease in the action selected is guaranteed by an intuitive steepening/tilting of the actions' payoffs and necessitates a slightly weaker such steepening. This basic pattern generalizes to a broad class of non-EU preferences.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.12926,
title = {Comparative Statics for the Subjective},
author = {Mark Whitmeyer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.12926},
year = {2025}
}