Suchergebnisse

The main purpose of the Handbook of Utility Theory is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area. The editors selected a list of topics that seemed ripe enough to be covered by review articles. Then they invited contributions from researchers whose expert work had come to their attention. So the list of topics and contributors is largely the editors' responsibility. Each contributor's chapter has been refereed, and revised according to the referees' remarks. Whereas Volume I of the Handbook of Utility Theory is largely concentrated on basic theory, the present volume is concerned with extensions and applications to other branches of economic theory. Taken together, these first two volumes contain all the purely theoretical material that the editors planned to cover. The chapters on experimental and empirical research on utility and the chapters on the history of utility theory will appear in Volume III

The book consists of three parts: The first part reviews the development in axiomatic utility theory under risk since the axiomatization of expected utility by von Neumann and Morgenstein. The second part explores some approaches to represent preferences which exhibit boundary effects. The third part shows that many results of insurance economics derived in the expected utility framework do not remain valid with non-expected utility theory

I. Rationality and Uncertainty in Decision Theory -- Rationality and Uncertainty -- Practical Certainty and the Acceptance of Empirical Statements -- A New Basis for Decision Theory -- Some Questions about Bayesian Decision Theory -- Regret, Recrimination and Rationality -- II. Utility and Uncertainty -- Determination of Cardinal Utility According to an Intrinsic Invariant Model -- The Present State of Utility Theory -- A Characterization of Decision Matrices that Yield Instrumental Expected Utility -- Associative Means and Utility Theory -- On Utility Functions in a Financial Context -- The Generalized Means Model (GMM) for Non-Deterministic Decision Making -- Individual Cardinal Utility, Interpersonal Comparisons, and Social Choice -- Surviving Implications of Expected Utility Theory -- Consistency and Expected Utility Theory -- Aggregate Revealed Preferences and Random Utility Theory -- Concave Additively Decomposable Representing Functions and Risk Aversion -- III. Information and Utility -- Concepts of Information Based on Utility -- Information Utility — Statistical and Semantical Features -- IV. Risk Propensity and Decision -- Assessing Risk Propensity -- What Naive Decision Makers can Tell Us About Risk -- A Measure of Risk Aversion in Terms of Preferences -- State-Dependent Utility and Risk Aversion -- V. Decision Making Under Uncertainty -- The Impact of Uncertainty on the Optimal Decision of Risk Neutral Firms -- Strategic Planning Models and Risk Management.