Temptation as a result of ambiguity

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1819795 (Table of Contents)

Employing the well-accepted axioms of Ghirardato, Maccheroni, and Marinacci (2004) on preferences under ambiguity and extending them to the case with menus while using a mild condition, we obtain a multiple-selves representation. As a result, when evaluating a menu the decision maker can be thought to imagine that with some menu-dependent probability his/her \ego" is in charge and he/she consumes the best alternative, whereas with the remaining probability the decision maker faces an ambiguity about his/her consumption as he/she does not know which one of his/her \alter egos" is to decide. We also show that our multiple-selves representation transforms into a dual-self representation under a more restrictive condition. Finally, the relation of our representation theorem with some models of temptation is analyzed and we show that our representation result delivers their key axioms concerning temptation.