CONTINUOUS PREFERENCE ORDERINGS REPRESENTABLE BY UTILITY FUNCTIONS

Carlos Hervés‐Beloso and Hugo del Valle-Inclan Cruces
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Carlos Hervés Beloso

Journal of Economic Surveys, 2019, vol. 33, issue 1, 179-194

Abstract: This paper surveys the conditions under which it is possible to represent a continuous preference ordering using utility functions. We start with a historical perspective on the notions of utility and preferences, continue by defining the mathematical concepts employed in this literature, and then list several key contributions to the topic of representability. These contributions concern both the preference orderings and the spaces where they are defined. For any continuous preference ordering, we show the need for separability and the sufficiency of connectedness and separability, or second countability, of the space where it is defined. We emphasize the need for separability by showing that in any nonseparable metric space, there are continuous preference orderings without utility representation. However, by reinforcing connectedness, we show that countably boundedness of the preference ordering is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a (continuous) utility representation. Finally, we discuss the special case of strictly monotonic preferences.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12259

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jecsur:v:33:y:2019:i:1:p:179-194

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0950-0804

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Surveys from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().