Econ 3810/Econ 6760/CS 5846: Course Outline
Warning: this is a rough outline, subject to change!
- 1. Introduction -- What is Decision Theory about?
- 2. Static Decision Theory -- Certain Prospects
- (a) Choice and Revealed Preference
- Alternatives
- Choice Functions
- Preferences
- (b) Representation of Preferences
- 3. Decision Rules and Uncertainty
- (a) Set-up: States, Actions, Outcomes, Order
- (b) The role of probability
- (c) A Zoo of Decision Rules
- i. Without probabilities
- Admissible
- Maxmin
- Minimax regret
- Competitive ratio
- ii. With probabilities
- Expected utility
- Min expected regret
- iii. With other representations of uncertainty
- Multiple priors
- Nonaddditive probabilities/Choquet measures
- Other approaches
- 4. Expected Utility Theories
- (a) Theory
- Objective uncertainty, von Neumann- Morgenstern
- Subjective uncertainty, Savage
- (b) Applications: Examples and Issues
- Decision theory in database query optimization
- Influence diagrams and Bayesian networks
- Value of information
- Utility elicitation
- Probability elicitation
- CP Networks
- 5. Problems with Decision Theories for Uncertain Prospects
- Allais
- Ellsberg
- Kahneman - Tversky
- Framing
- 6. Applying Decision Theory to Ethical Issues + Other
topics (to be determined)