Structuring and Assessing Linear Lexicographic Utility.

We outline an approach for assessing preferences in the form of a finite-dimensional, linear-lexicographic utility function when they lack the continuity properties necessary for representing them in the form of a real-valued, von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. This approach takes the decision consequences as general descriptions, but it can exploit an available and conformable multiattribute structuring. The assessment task is one of several features of discontinuous preferences that are simplified by using a particular but always available type of linear-lexicographic representation, called the echelon-basis form. Copyright 1996 by Kluwer Academic Publishers