English

Recursive Preferences and Ambiguity Attitudes

Theoretical Economics 2026-01-23 v6

Abstract

Monotonicity and recursivity are central assumptions in intertemporal consumption problems under ambiguity. We show that monotone recursive preferences admit both a recursive and an ex-ante representation, and that the certainty equivalent functionals associated with these representations are translation invariant. Translation invariance implies that the decision maker's ambiguity attitudes are constant, in the sense that they do not vary with the level of welfare or utility. Finally, we establish an equation linking the two certainty equivalent functionals that extends the notion of rectangularity for recursive multiple priors, we call it generalized rectangularity. This equation yields a simple, testable condition for dynamic consistency.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.06830,
  title  = {Recursive Preferences and Ambiguity Attitudes},
  author = {Massimo Marinacci and Giulio Principi and Lorenzo Stanca},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.06830},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:05:28.005Z