Risk, Ambiguity and Decision [Paperback]

Ellsberg elaborates on Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms and mounts a powerful challenge to the dominant theory of rational decision in this book.Acknowledgments; Note to Reader; Foreword, Isaac Levi; 1. Ambiguity and Risk; Vagueness, Confidence, and the Weight of Arguments; The Nature and Uses of Normative Theory; The Validation of Normative Propositions; The Utility Axioms as Norms; Normative Theory and Empirical Research; 2. The Bernoulli Proposition; A Possible Counterexample: Are there Uncertainties that are Not Risks?; Vulgar Evaluations of Risk; 3. The Measurement of Definite Opinions; von Neumann-Morgenstern Utilities; Probability as Price; Coherence and Definiteness of Probability-Prices; Appendix to Chapter Three; On Making a Fool of Oneself: The Requirement of Coherence; Acceptable Odds: Definite, Coherent, and Otherwise; 4. Opinions and Actions: Which Come First?; The Logic of Degrees of Belief; Opinions that Make Horse Races; Postulate 2: the Sure-Thing Principle ; Intuitive Probabilities and Vagueness ; Appendix to Chapter Four; The Savage Postulates; The Koopman Axioms; 5. Uncertainties that are Not Risks; The Three-Color Urn Example; Vulgar Evaluations of Ambiguity; Appendix to Chapter Five; 6. Why Are Some Uncertainties Not Risks?; Decision Criteria for Complete Ignorance ; Decision Criteria for Partial Ignorance ; 7. The Restricted Hurwicz Criterion ; The Restricted Bayes/Hurwicz Criterion ; Boldness and Prudence: the n-Color Urn Example; Ignorance, Probability, and Varieties of Gamblers; 8. Ambiguity and the Utility Axioms; The Pratt/Raiffa Criticisms and the Value of Randomization; Rubin's Axiom; Allais and the Sure-Thing Principle; Winning at Russian Roulette; BibliographyDaniel Ellsbergwas a strategic analyst with the RAND Corporation, and a defense department and state department official who served in Vietnam. He later revealed to the U.S. Senate and the press the Pentagon Papers, a 7lƒ'