Alfonso Maselli

Welcome!

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

I work on microeconomic theory, in particular, decision theory, and game theory.

Contact: masellia@sas.upenn.edu.

My CV is here.

Working Papers

Misspecification Averse Preferences (draft coming soon)

We study a decision maker who approaches an uncertain decision problem by formulating a set of plausible probabilistic models of the environment but is aware that these models are only stylized and incomplete approximations. We introduce the concept of a best-fit map that identifies the most suitable model within this potentially misspecified set based on observable data. Building on this, we develop an axiomatic foundation for preferences that are averse to misspecification. In particular, we introduce a novel criterion that discriminates between aversion to misspecification and attitudes toward model ambiguity. First, conditional on a model having the best fit, the decision maker forms a misspecification-robust evaluation by considering a range of models in proximity to the best-fitted one. Then, she aggregates these robust evaluations via a monotone and quasiconcave aggregator incorporating uncertainty about what model is the best approximation of the environment.