A framework for robustness to ambiguity of higher-order beliefs

Abstract

Standard type spaces induce belief structures defined by precise beliefs. This paper proposes and analyzes simple procedures for constructing perturbations of such belief structures in which beliefs have a degree of ambiguity. Specifically, we construct ambiguous type spaces whose induced (ambiguous) belief hierarchies approximate the standard, precise, belief hierarchies corresponding to the initial type space. Based on a metric that captures the resulting approximation, two alternative procedures to construct such perturbations are introduced, and are shown to yield a simple and intuitive characterization of convergence to the initial unperturbed environment. As a special case, one of these procedures is shown to characterize the set of all finite perturbations. The introduced perturbations and their convergence properties provide conceptual foundations for the analysis of robustness to ambiguity of various solutions concepts, and for various decision rules under ambiguity.