Economics have long associated decision making wit optimization. The decision maker chooses an action from a known choice set C. he chosen action maximizes a known real-valued objective function F (.): C -- R. Optimization assumes enough knowledge of C and f(.) to determine an optimal action....

This paper develops a broad theme about policy choice under ambiguity through study of a particular decision criterion. The broad theme is that, where feasible, choice between a status quo policy and an innovation is better framed as selection of a treatment allocation than as a binary decision....