Publications
Publications
- 2010
- HBS Working Paper Series
Overconfidence by Bayesian Rational Agents
Abstract
This paper derives two mechanisms through which Bayesian-rational individuals with differing priors will tend to be relatively overconfident about their estimates and predictions, in the sense of overestimating the precision of these estimates. The intuition behind one mechanism is slightly ironic: in trying to update optimally, Bayesian agents overweight information of which they over-estimate the precision and underweight in the opposite case. This causes overall an over-estimation of the precision of the final estimate, which tends to increase as agents get more data.
Keywords
Citation
Van den Steen, Eric. "Overconfidence by Bayesian Rational Agents." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 11-049, November 2010.