Why Would Nature Give Individuals Utility Functions?

Arthur Robson

Journal of Political Economy, 2001, vol. 109, issue 4, 900-929

Abstract: Consider the possible biological origin of the expected utility criterion. On the one hand, if individuals possess a utility function stemming from the rate of production of expected offspring, they can rapidly adapt to arbitrary unknown distributions in a bandit problem. Embedding such a utility function in a simple rule of thumb involving no beliefs about probabilities leads to evolutionary optimality. On the other hand, if any rule whatever yields evolutionary optimality for all distributions, this precise utility function must be implicit, in a revealed preference sense.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/322083 main text (application/pdf)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jpolec:v:109:y:2001:i:4:p:900-929

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().