When is there state independence?Brian Hill () Journal of Economic Theory, 2009, vol. 144, issue 3, pages 1119-1134 Abstract: Whether a preference relation can be represented using state-independent utilities as opposed to state-dependent utilities may depend on which acts count as constant acts. This observation underlies an extension of Savage's expected utility theory to the state-dependent case that was proposed in this journal by Edi Karni. His result contains a condition requiring the existence of a set of acts which can play the role of constant acts and support a representation involving a state-independent utility function. This paper contains necessary and sufficient conditions on the preference relation for such a set of acts to exist. Results are obtained both for the Savage and the Anscombe and Aumann frameworks. Among the corollaries are representation theorems for state-dependent utilities. Relationships to Karni's work and extensions of the results are discussed. Keywords: Subjective; expected; utility; State-dependent; utility; Monotonicity; axiom (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:144:y:2009:i:3:p:1119-1134 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Theory is edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell More articles in Journal of Economic Theory from Elsevier |
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