Preferences as Desire Fulfilment

Marc-Arthur Diaye and Daniel Schoch

No 03-17, Documents de recherche from Centre d'Études des Politiques Économiques (EPEE), Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne

Abstract: We consider preferences as fulfilment of cardinal conditional desires, which can be either positive or negative, or both. In contrast to the standard multiattributive approach, we do not presuppose the desires to be preferentially independent, but rather allow for conditional preference reversal. It is only assumed that the desires do not supervene on each other. The relation between preferences and desires are analyzed. We formulate a representation theorem characterizing when a preference order is compatible with the logical structure of desires, and has an additive representation over the desires. It is unique relative to a given utility function representing the preferences. For cardinal preferences on a difference or ratio scale, this implies that the strength of desires is measured on a common ration scale.

Keywords: Preferences; Desires; Utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2003
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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