A Revealed Preference Theory for Expected Utility

Abstract

Standard axiomatizations of expected-utility theory envision an agent with fixed probability assessments who can be observed to choose actions from varying opportunity sets (for instance, pairs of lotteries). These axiomatizations also envision that the agent's preferences among these actions depend on the state of nature only through clearly defined and observable consequences. This viewpoint may be unnecessarily restrictive as a basis for applying and evaluating the theory. We study instead the pattern of choices from a fixed set of actions as probability assessments change. Convexity and integrability conditions characterize maximization of expected state-dependent utility.