Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/70401 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Research Report No. 2012-3
Publisher: 
The University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics, London (Ontario)
Abstract: 
We introduce three definitions. First, we let a basement be a set of nodes and actions that supports at least one assessment. Second, we derive from an arbitrary basement its implied plausibility (i.e. infinite-relative-likelihood) relation among the game's nodes. Third, we say that this plausibility relation is additive if it has a completion represented by the nodal sums of a mass function defined over the game's actions. This last construction is built upon Streufert (2012)'s result that nodes can be specified as sets of actions. Our central result is that a basement has additive plausibility if and only if it supports at least one consistent assessment. The result's proof parallels the early foundations of probability theory and requires only Farkas' Lemma. The result leads to related characterizations, to an easily tested necessary condition for consistency, and to the repair of a nontrivial gap in a proof of Kreps and Wilson (1982).
Subjects: 
plausibility relation
additive representation
plausibility mass function
infinite relative likelihood
JEL: 
C72
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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