[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gre/wpaper/2020-35.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Building Belief Systems and Medical Ethics: The Covid-19 Controversies

Author

Listed:
  • Gérard Mondello

    (Université Côte d'Azur, France
    GREDEG CNRS)

Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic upset both the economies of most countries, but also the field of medical science. As never, public opinion has interfered in the choice of therapeutic trials as evidenced by the controversies surrounding protocols using hydroxychloroquine. The public's choice for these treatments is explained as the application of a kind of individual "Pascal's wager". This article analyses the formation of the belief system of individuals by applying ambiguity theory's insights and information entropy. It shows that the public's choices are the result of efficient communication strategies chosen by these treatments' promoters.

Suggested Citation

  • Gérard Mondello, 2020. "Building Belief Systems and Medical Ethics: The Covid-19 Controversies," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-35, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    • Handle: RePEc:gre:wpaper:2020-35
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://195.220.190.85/GREDEG-WP-2020-35.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Camerer, Colin & Weber, Martin, 1992. "Recent Developments in Modeling Preferences: Uncertainty and Ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 325-370, October.
    2. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    3. Chateauneuf, Alain & Eichberger, Jurgen & Grant, Simon, 2007. "Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind: Neo-additive capacities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 538-567, November.
    4. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    5. Sismondo, Sergio, 2008. "How pharmaceutical industry funding affects trial outcomes: Causal structures and responses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 1909-1914, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aurélien Baillon & Zhenxing Huang & Asli Selim & Peter P. Wakker, 2018. "Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes for All (Natural) Events," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1839-1858, September.
    2. Zhihua Li & Julia Müller & Peter P. Wakker & Tong V. Wang, 2018. "The Rich Domain of Ambiguity Explored," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(7), pages 3227-3240, July.
    3. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2021. "The evolutionary stability of optimism, pessimism, and complete ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 417-454, May.
    4. Andrew J. Keith & Darryl K. Ahner, 2021. "A survey of decision making and optimization under uncertainty," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 300(2), pages 319-353, May.
    5. Kauffeldt, Florian & Wiesenfarth, Boris, 2014. "Confidence, Pessimism and their Impact on Product Differentiation in a Hotelling Model with Demand Location Uncertainty," Working Papers 0562, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    6. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey, 2011. "Are the treasures of game theory ambiguous?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(2), pages 313-339, October.
    7. Arthur E. Attema & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L'Haridon, 2018. "Ambiguity preferences for health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(11), pages 1699-1716, November.
    8. Marco Rojas & Damián Vergara, 2021. "Ambiguity and long-run cooperation in strategic games," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 1077-1098.
    9. Stefan Trautmann & Peter P. Wakker, 2018. "Making the Anscombe-Aumann approach to ambiguity suitable for descriptive applications," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 83-116, February.
    10. Daniel Heyen, 2018. "Ambiguity aversion under maximum-likelihood updating," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(3), pages 373-386, May.
    11. Carlo Zappia, 2015. "Daniel Ellsberg on the Ellsberg Paradox," Department of Economics University of Siena 716, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    12. Gérard Mondello, 2016. "The Negligence Rule Specificity under Radical Uncertainty," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-32, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    13. Nicolas Lampach & Sandrine Spaeter, 2016. "The Efficiency of (strict) Liability Rules revised in Risk and Ambiguity," Working Papers of BETA 2016-29, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    14. Gérard Mondello, 2022. "Information Source's Reliability," GREDEG Working Papers 2022-21, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France, revised Oct 2022.
    15. Groneck, Max & Ludwig, Alexander & Zimper, Alexander, 2016. "A life-cycle model with ambiguous survival beliefs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 137-180.
    16. Claudio A. Bonilla & Pablo A. Gutiérrez Cubillos, 2021. "The effects of ambiguity on entrepreneurship," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 63-80, February.
    17. Dominiak, Adam & Duersch, Peter & Lefort, Jean-Philippe, 2012. "A dynamic Ellsberg urn experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 625-638.
    18. Zimper, Alexander, 2012. "Asset pricing in a Lucas fruit-tree economy with the best and worst in mind," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 610-628.
    19. Yoram Halevy & Vincent Feltkamp, 2005. "A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(2), pages 449-466.
    20. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Horst Zank, 2023. "Source and rank-dependent utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 949-981, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Uncertainty Theory; Ambiguity; Pharmacy; Medicine;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I19 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Other
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gre:wpaper:2020-35. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Patrice Bougette (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/credcfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.