THE STRUCTURE OF UTILITY FUNCTIONS.
Abstract
A continuous complete preference ordering is defined on an arcconnected, topologically separable product space S = S1xS2x..xSn. Call 1,..n sectors and say that a set A of sectors is separable if the conditional ordering on A, given what happens off it, is independent of the latter, essential if it matters what happens on A, at least sometimes, and strictly essential if it always does. It is shown how to determine the structure of the utility function, given a collection of separable sets, when each sector is strictly essential. Various examples are discussed, an alternative approach sketched, and, finally, the requirement of strict essentiality replaced by the basically nugatory condition that each sector be essential. The results can, of course, be applied to other functions, too. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1967
- Accession Number
- AD0657126
Entities
People
- William M. Gorman
Organizations
- Stanford University