This 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...

This 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...

When economists have to choose between competing theories, they evaluate not only the theories’ empirical relevance, but also qualities like their simplicity, tractability, parsimony and unifying power. These are called the epistemic virtues of a theory. The present paper proposes a formal...

The paper shows that cardinal utility entered economic analysis during the Ordinal Revolution initiated by Pareto and not, as many popular histories of utility theory assume, before it. Cardinal utility was the outcome of a discussion begun by Pareto about the capacity of ranking transitions...

A review essay on Steven G. Medema, The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self- Interest in the History of Economic Ideas, Princeton (nj) and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. xiii+230.