PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

We explore the intuitive idea that more information leads to greater dispersion of posterior beliefs about the expected state of the world. We consider three nested dispersion orders that are widely used in the literature, and derive the weakest information concept compatible with each order. Our results illustrate both the potential and the limitations of using dispersion orders as information concepts: while dispersion orders on conditional expectations of the state do not qualify as information concepts, strengthening the orders to include the conditional expect ations of state utilities under any strictly increasing von-Neumann-Morgenstern utility function does give rise to bona fide information criteria.