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Almost
any decision is taken in the face of uncertainty. Uncertainty takes
various forms. We got a number of theories of decision making in the
face of known unknowns: All outcomes are known but we lack
information about which outcome occurs. However, we miss a tractable
but general theory of decision making in the face of unknown
unknowns, when we lack comprehension or even lack
conception of the situation. We take our biggest decisions
in the face of unknown unknowns. It applies to personal decision
like what to study, whom to marry, or which profession to enter. It
holds for corporate decisions like which business project to pursue or
markets to enter, as well as for political decision on institutions
and laws. Obviously, it also holds for decisions of mankind on how to
deal with existential risks and opportunities.
The Unawareness Project is devoted to research on theories of unknown unknowns and its applications. We develop and study
Recent Research
Efficient Mechanisms
under Unawareness (Kym Pram and Burkhard C. Schipper)
Predicting
the Unpredictable under Subjective Expected Utility (Burkhard C.
Schipper)
Interactive Awareness of Unawareness (Burkhard C. Schipper), Video of plenary talk at TARK 2021
Rationalizable Screening and Disclosure under Unawareness (Alejandro Francetich and Burkhard C. Schipper), Slides
Discovery and Equilibrium in Games with Unawareness (Burkhard C. Schipper), Journal of Economic Theory 198 (2021), 105365.
Value-Capture in the Face of Known and Unknown Unknowns (Kevin Bryan, Michael Ryall, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Strategy Science, accepted. Slides, Preprint
Prudent Rationalizability in Generalized Extensive-Form Games with Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 21 (Special Issue on Unawareness) (2021), 525-556. Preprint
The
Unawareness Project brings together researchers on
unawareness through mini workshops. Get
in touch if you want to join future mini workshops.
Mini-Workshops
Zoom Mini-Workshop on New Developments in Epistemic Logic with Unawareness, December 2, 2022
Zoom
Mini-Workshop on Decision Theory with Unawareness, June 3, 2022
Zoom Mini-Workshop on Financial Markets with Unawareness, May 21, 2021
Zoom Mini-Workshop on Contract Theory with Unawareness, April 23, 2021
The Unawareness Project
promotes a new generation of social scientists who are formally
trained in theories of unawareness through mini graduate courses
on unawareness (e.g. Epicenter Summer School, Maastricht, 2015,
Lake Como Summer School on Logic, Uncertainty, and Games, 2018). Get
in touch if you want me to teach in your program.
I am
always looking for bright PhD students and collaborators to get
involved. Potential PhD students need to apply to our economics
PhD program at UC Davis, survive a competitive selection process
as well as our demanding graduate course work. I am also affiliated
with the Graduate Group in
Applied Mathematics at UC Davis.
Resent
visitors: Gaia
Belardinelli, Visiting PhD student from the Center for Bubble
Studies, University of Copenhagen, March - June, 2022
The Unawareness Project
encourages people to get involved. You can get involved by
familiarizing yourself with research on unawareness, participating in
our mini-workshops, collaborate on research, or donate to The
Unawareness Project.
A Reader on
Unawareness
Belief, Awareness, and Limited Reasoning (Ron Fagin and Joe Halpern), Artificial Intelligence 34 (1988), 39-76.
Interactive Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Journal of Economic Theory 130 (2006), 78-94. Preprint
Awareness (Burkhard C. Schipper), in: Handbook of Epistemic Logic, Chapter 3, H. van Ditmarsch, J.Y. Halpern, W. van der Hoek and B. Kooi (Eds.), College Publications, London, 2015, 77–146.
Dynamic Unawareness and Rationalizable Behavior (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Games and Economic Behavior 81 (2013), 50-68. Preprint
Further Reading: The Unawareness Bibliography
The Unawareness Project
is an initiative by Burkhard C. Schipper,
professor of economics and an affiliated faculty member at the
Graduate Group in Applied Mathematics at the University of California,
Davis. He studied economics at the University of Bonn and Tel Aviv
University, receiving a PhD from the University of Bonn in 2003. His
research focuses on inventing mathematical tools for modeling of
unawareness in game theory and decision theory and its application to
economics, finance and politics. He also studies human behavior
through experiments.
We are grateful for support from the Army Research Office through Contract W911NF2210282 for part of the research of The Unawareness Project.
All Research and Writings of the The Unawareness Project
Efficient Mechanism
under Unawareness (Kym Pram and Burkhard C. Schipper)
Predicting
the Unpredictable under Subjective Expected Utility (Burkhard C.
Schipper)
Interactive Awareness of Unawareness
(Burkhard C. Schipper), Video
of plenary talk at TARK 2021
Rationalizable
Screening and Disclosure under Unawareness (Alejandro Francetich
and Burkhard C. Schipper), Slides
Insiders Trading on Unknown Unknowns (Burkhard C. Schipper and Hang Zhou), Slides
Network Formation in a Society with Fragmented Knowledge and Awareness (Burkhard C. Schipper)
Disclosure under Unawareness: An Experiment (Yingxue Li and Burkhard C. Schipper)
Kuhn's Theorem for Extensive Games with Unawareness (Burkhard C. Schipper)
Conditional Dominance in Dynamic Games with Unawareness (Martin Meier and Burkhard C. Schipper)
Discovery and Equilibrium in Games with Unawareness (Burkhard C. Schipper), Journal of Economic Theory 198 (2021), 105365.
Value-Capture in the Face of Known and Unknown Unknowns (Kevin Bryan, Michael Ryall, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Strategy Science, accepted. Slides, Preprint.
Prudent Rationalizability in Generalized Extensive-Form Games with Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 21 (Special Issue on Unawareness) (2021), 525-556. Preprint
Introduction to the Special Issue on Unawareness, B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 21 (2021), 355-360.
Political
Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters and Negative Electoral
Campaigning (Burkhard C. Schipper and Hee Yeul Woo), Quarterly
Journal of Political Science 14 (2019), 41-88. Preprint
Does
Exposure to Unawareness Affect Risk Preferences? A Preliminary
Result (Wenjun Ma and Burkhard C. Schipper), Theory and Decision
83 (2017), 245–257. Preprint, Stata
Do-file/Data
Self-Confirming Games: Unawareness, Discovery, and Equilibrium (Burkhard C. Schipper), in: Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, Proceedings of the Sixteens Conference (TARK 2017), Jerome Lang (Ed.), Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 251, 470–488.
Awareness (Burkhard C. Schipper), in: Handbook of Epistemic Logic, Chapter 3, H. van Ditmarsch, J.Y. Halpern, W. van der Hoek and B. Kooi (Eds.), College Publications, London, 2015, 77–146.
Speculative Trade under Unawareness - The Infinite Case (Martin Meier and Burkhard C. Schipper), Economic Theory Bulletin 2 (2014), 147-160. Preprint
Unawareness - A Gentle Introduction to both the Literature and the Special Issue (Burkhard C. Schipper), Mathematical Social Sciences 70 (2014), 1-9. Preprint
Preference-Based Unawareness (Burkhard C. Schipper), Mathematical Social Sciences 70 (2014), 34-41. PreprintBayesian Games with Unawareness and Unawareness Perfection (Martin Meier and Burkhard C. Schipper), Economic Theory 56 (2014), 219-249. Preprint
Dynamic Unawareness and Rationalizable Behavior (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Games and Economic Behavior 81 (2013), 50-68. Preprint
Unawareness, Beliefs, and Speculative Trade (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Games and Economic Behavior 77 (2013), 100-121. Prior version with the universal type space
Awareness-Dependent Subjective Expected Utility (Burkhard C. Schipper), International Journal of Game Theory 42 (2013), 725-753. Preprint
Two Models of Unawareness: Comparing the Object-Based and Subjective-State-Space Approaches (Oliver Board, Kim-Sau Chung, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Synthese 179 (2011), 13-34. Preprint
A Canonical Model for Interactive Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Games and Economic Behavior 62 (2008), 305-324. Preprint
A Canonical Model for Interactive Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), in: Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, Proceedings of the 11th Conference (TARK 2007), Dov Samet (Ed.), Presses Universitaires De Louvain, 177-182.
Unawareness, Beliefs and Games (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, Burkhard C. Schipper), in: Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, Proceedings of the 11th Conference (TARK 2007), Dov Samet (Ed.), Presses Universitaires De Louvain, 183-192.
Interactive Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), Journal of Economic Theory 130 (2006), 78-94. Preprint
Multi-Person Unawareness (Aviad Heifetz, Martin Meier, and Burkhard C. Schipper), in: Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, Proceedings of the Ninth Conference (TARK 2003), Moshe Tennenholtz (Ed.), ACM, 145-158.