The paper illustrates the methodological and analytical issues that characterized, as well as the personal and institutional aspects that informed the discussions leading to the definition of the current notion of cardinal utility as utility unique up to positive linear transformations. As...

In this paper, we consider a portfolio optimization problem in a defaultable market. The representative investor dynamically allocates his or her wealth among the following securities: a perpetual defaultable bond, a money market account and a default-free risky asset. The optimal investment and...

A major virtue of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility, for example, in the theory of general financial equilibrium (GFE), is that it ensures time consistency: consumption-portfolio plans (for the future) are in fact executed (in the future) - assuming that there is perfect foresight about relevant...