Cursed Equilibria and Knightian Uncertainty in a Trading Game
Theoretical Economics
2025-06-13 v1
Abstract
We introduce a novel equilibrium concept that incorporates Knightian uncertainty into the cursed equilibrium (Eyster and Rabin, 2005). This concept is then applied to a two-player game in which agents can engage in trade or refuse to do so. While the Bayesian Nash equilibrium predicts that trade never happens, players do trade in a cursed equilibrium. The inclusion of uncertainty enhances this effect for cursed and uncertainty averse players. This contrasts general findings that uncertainty reduces trade but is consistent with behavior that has been observed in experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.10663,
title = {Cursed Equilibria and Knightian Uncertainty in a Trading Game},
author = {Jurek Preker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.10663},
year = {2025}
}