A method to elicit beliefs as most likely intervals

Abstract

We show how to elicit the beliefs of an expert in the form of a “most likely interval”, a set of future outcomes that are deemed more likely than any other outcome. Our method, called the Most Likely Interval elicitation rule (MLI), asks the expert for an interval and pays according to how well the answer compares to the actual outcome. We show that the MLI performs well in economic experiments, and satisfies a number of desirable theoretical properties such as robustness to the risk preferences of the expert.

Keywords

• Belief elicitation
• scoring rules
• subjective probabilities
• confidence intervals