arXiv subjects

Hendrik Rommeswinkel

Publications and source records attributed to Hendrik Rommeswinkel.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Preference for Verifiability

Decision makers sometimes cannot observe the consequences of their actions ex-post. This paper axiomatically characterizes a decision model in which the decision maker cares about verifying that a good consequence has been achieved. Preferences over acts identify a set of events the decision maker expects to verify. Decision makers choose acts maximizing, in expectation over verifiable events, the worst-case utility consistent with each event. A dual model captures decision makers who instead seek to obscure poor outcomes from verification. As an application, firms choosing carbon-reduction technologies may prefer less efficient but more verifiable technologies to prove emission reductions to stakeholders.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2025

Procedural Mixture Sets

The paper characterizes the Shannon (1948) and Tsallis (1988) entropies in a standard framework of decision theory, mixture sets. Procedural mixture sets are introduced as a variant of mixture sets in which it is not necessarily true that a mixture of two identical elements yields the same element. This allows the process of mixing itself to have an intrinsic value. The paper proves the surprising result that simply imposing the standard axioms of von Neumann-Morgenstern on preferences on a procedural mixture set yields the entropy as a representation of procedural value. An application of the theorem to decision processes and the relation between choice probabilities and decision times elucidates the difficulty of extending the drift-diffusion model to multi-alternative choice.

econ.TH↗