Prudent Rationalizability in Generalized Extensive-form Games with Unawareness

Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, Burkhard C. Schipper

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We define a cautious version of extensive-form rationalizability for generalized extensive-form games with unawareness that we call prudent rationalizability. It is an extensive-form analog of iterated admissibility. In each round of the procedure, for each tree and each information set of a player a surviving strategy of hers is required to be rational vis-a-vis a belief system with a full-support belief on the opponents' previously surviving strategies that reach that information set. We demonstrate the applicability of prudent rationalizability. In games of disclosure of verifiable information, we show that prudent rationalizability yields unraveling under full awareness but unraveling might fail under unawareness. We compare prudent rationalizability to extensive-form rationalizability. We show that prudent rationalizability may not refine extensive-form rationalizability strategies but conjecture that the paths induced by prudent rationalizable strategy profiles (weakly) refine the set of paths induced by extensive-form rationalizable strategies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)525-556
Number of pages32
JournalB.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics
Volume21
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2020.

Keywords

  • caution
  • common strong cautious belief in rationality
  • disclosure
  • extensive-form rationalizability
  • iterated admissibility
  • persuasion games
  • unawareness
  • verifiable information

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