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Prudent Rationalizability in Generalized Extensive-Form Games with Unawareness

  • Aviad Heifetz
  • , Martin Meier
  • , Burkhard Schipper
  • University of California Davis
  • Open University of Israel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

We define a cautious version of extensive-form rationalizability for generalized extensive-form games with unawareness that we call prudent rationalizability. It is an extensive-form analog of iterated admissibility. In each round of the procedure, for each tree and each information set of a player a surviving strategy of hers is required to be rational vis-a-vis a belief system with a full-support belief on the opponents' previously surviving strategies that reach that information set. We demonstrate the applicability of prudent rationalizability. In games of disclosure of verifiable information, we show that prudent rationalizability yields unraveling under full awareness but unraveling might fail under unawareness. We compare prudent rationalizability to extensive-form rationalizability. We show that prudent rationalizability may not refine extensive-form rationalizability strategies but conjecture that the paths induced by prudent rationalizable strategy profiles (weakly) refine the set of paths induced by extensive-form rationalizable strategies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)525–556
Number of pages32
JournalThe B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics
Volume21
Issue number2
Early online date19 May 2020
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2020.

Funding

Aviad is grateful for financial support from the Open University of Israel's Research Fund grant no. 46106. Martin was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia via a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship (IAE-CSIC) and a Research Grant (SEJ 2006-02079). Burkhard is grateful for financial support from the NSF SES-0647811.

FundersFunder number
Open University of Israel's Research Fund46106
National Science FoundationSES-0647811
Ministerio de Educación Superior, Ciencia y Tecnología, República DominicanaSEJ 2006-02079

    Keywords

    • caution
    • common strong cautious belief in rationality
    • disclosure
    • extensive-form rationalizability
    • iterated admissibility
    • persuasion games
    • unawareness
    • verifiable information

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Economics,Econometrics and Finance

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