Published November 2014
| Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article
Open
Claim Validation
Chicago
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Abstract
Hume (1748) challenged the idea that a general claim (e.g. "all swans are white") can be validated by empirical evidence, no matter how compelling. We examine this issue from the perspective of a tester who must accept or reject the forecasts of a potential expert. If experts can be skeptical about the validity of claims then they can strategically evade rejection. In contrast, if experts are required to conclude that claims backed by sufficient evidence are likely to be true, then they can be tested and rejected. These results provide an economic rationale for claim validation based on incentive problems.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Economic Association. We thank three anonymous referees for many useful suggestions. We also thank Wojciech Olszewski, Eran Shmaya, Marciano Siniscalchi, and Rakesh Vohra for useful discussions, and seminar audiences at the Canadian Economic Theory Conference 2012, the Fifth Transatlantic Theory Workshop, the Summer meeting of the Econometric Society 2012, XIII Latin American Workshop in Economic Theory, Jolate conference in Bogota, and the Washington University seminar series. Sandroni gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation. All errors are ours.Attached Files
Published - claim_validation.pdf
Supplemental Material - 20130516_app.pdf
Supplemental Material - 20130516_ds.zip
Files
20130516_app.pdf
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 94494
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190405-093152329
- NSF
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2019-04-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field