An additively separable representation in the Savage framework

Brian Hill (1)

1 GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC

This paper proposes necessary and sufficient conditions for an additively separable representation of preferences in the Savage framework (where the objects of choice are acts: measurable functions from an infinite set of states to a potentially finite set of consequences). A preference relation over acts is represented by the integral over the subset of the product of the state space and the consequence space which corresponds to the act, where this integral is calculated with respect to an evaluation measure on this space. The result requires neither Savage's P3 (monotonicity) nor his P4 (weak comparative probability). Nevertheless, the representation it provides is as useful as Savage's for many economic applications.

Mots clés: Expected utility; Additive representation; State-dependent utility; Monotonicity

Domaines: Economie et sciences de la décision

Brian Hill. An additively separable representation in the Savage framework. Journal of Economic Theory, 2010, 145 (5), pp.2044-2054. ⟨10.1016/j.jet.2010.03.011⟩. ⟨hal-00521803⟩