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Eliciting Subjective Probabilities Through Exchangeable Events: An Advantage and a Limitation

Department of Applied Economics, Erasmus University, NL-3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
baillon{at}few.eur.nl

Two events are exchangeable for an agent when she is indifferent to permutations of their outcomes. Such events are thus revealed to be equally likely. If they are complementary, the subjective probability associated with each event should be 1/2 (assuming the additivity of the probability measure). This paper reports the results of an experiment that elicits probabilities through exchangeable events. The experiment shows that this method does not suffer from source dependence, i.e., the preference for betting on some events based on knowledge about the mechanism that generates them. However, it also highlights how additivity might be violated. This paper deduces the practical implications of these results.

Key Words: subjective probability; elicitation; source of uncertainty; support theory; event-splitting effect
History: Received on November 16, 2007. Accepted on April 27, 2008.

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