HEC Research Papers Series,
HEC Paris

Abstract: This paper develops and defends a new approach to belief aggregation, involving confidence in beliefs. It is characterised by a variant of the Pareto condition that enjoins respecting consensuses borne of compromise. Confidence aggregation recoups standard probability aggregation rules, such as linear pooling, as special cases, whilst avoiding the spurious unanimity issues that have plagued such rules. Moreover, it generates a new family of probability aggregation rules that can faithfully accommodate within-person expertise diversity, hence resolving a longstanding challenge. Confidence aggregation also outperforms linear aggregation: the group beliefs it provides are closer to the truth, in expectation. Finally, confidence aggregation is dynamically rational: it commutes with update.

Keywords: Belief aggregation; confidence in beliefs; Pareto principle; linear pooling; spurious unanimity; expertise; consensus; model averaging; model misspecification.

JEL-codes: D70; D81

65 pages, March 14, 2023

Full text files

papers.cfm?abstract_id=4387641 HTML file Full text

Download statistics

• HEC Paris
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Antoine Haldemann ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-07-26 16:27:48.