Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/76582 
Year of Publication: 
2003
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 1092
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We develop a model of undescribable events. Examples of events that are well understood by economic agents but are prohibitively difficult to describe in advance abound in real-life. This notion has also pervaded a substantial amount of economic literature. We put forth a model of such events using a simple co-insurance problem as backdrop. Undescribable events in our model are understood by economic agents - their consequences and probabilities are known - but are such that every finite description of such events necessarily leaves out relevant features that have a non-negligible impact on the parties' expected utilities. We also show that two key ingredients of our model - probabilities that are finitely additive but fail countable additivity, and a state space that is small (discrete in our model) in a measure-theoretic sense -are necessary ingredients of any model of undescribable events that delivers our results.
Subjects: 
undescribable events
incomplete contracts
finite invariance
fine variability
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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