arXiv 9 Oct 2025 · Theoretical Economics
arXiv:2510.08709 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
This paper proposes a fully prior-free model of experimentation in which the decision maker observes the entire distribution of signals generated by a known experiment under an unknown distribution of the state of the world. One experiment is robustly more informative than another if the decision maker's maxmin expected utility after observing the output of the former is always at least her maxmin expected utility after observing the latter. We show that this ranking holds if and only if the less informative experiment is a linear transformation of the more informative experiment; equivalently, the null space of the more informative experiment is a subset of the null space of the less informative experiment. Our criterion is implied by Blackwell's order but does not imply it, and we show by example that our ranking admits strictly more comparable pairs of experiments than the classical ranking.
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The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angrist, Joshua D. and Imbens, Guido W. and Rubin, Donald B (1996) Identification of Causal Effects Using Instrumental Variables | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 2 | Imbens, Guido W. and Angrist, Joshua D (1994) Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 3 | Jian Li and Junjie Zhou (2016) Blackwell's informativeness ranking with uncertainty-averse preferences | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 4 | Manski, Charles F (2003) Partial Identification of Probability Distributions | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 5 | Molinari, Francesca (2020) Microeconometrics with Partial Identification | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 6 | Tamer, Elie (2010) Partial Identification in Econometrics | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 7 | Whitmeyer, Mark (2025) Blackwell-Monotone Updating Rules | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 8 | Blackwell, David (1951) Comparison of Experiments | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 9 | Blackwell, David (1953) Equivalent Comparisons of Experiments | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | Celen, Bo ga chan (2012) Informativeness of experiments for MEU | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 12 scored citations.