Obvious belief elicitation

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Abstract

An investigator is interested in arbitrarily approximating a subject's latent beliefs in obviously dominant strategies (Li, 2017). We prove that Karni's ascending mechanism (Karni, 2009) does not have an obviously dominant strategy. Thus, we introduce the novel descending Karni mechanism which always has obviously dominant strategies. Furthermore, under the assumption that the subject chooses an obviously dominant strategy, the true beliefs can be approximated with arbitrary precision with our mechanism. All our results hold for a very broad class of likelihood relations, going well beyond those that are represented by probabilistic beliefs.

Original languageEnglish
PublisherMaastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics
Number of pages11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Jan 2019

Publication series

SeriesGSBE Research Memoranda
Number001

JEL classifications

  • c90 - Design of Experiments: General
  • c91 - Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
  • d81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
  • d82 - "Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design"
  • d83 - "Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief"

Keywords

  • belief elicitation
  • Karni mechanism
  • obvious dominance

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