We consider preference relations over information that are monotone: more information is preferred to less. We prove that, if a preference relation on information about an uncountable set of states of nature is monotone, then it is not representable by a utility function.

In the empirical and theoretical literature a consumer's utility function is often assumed to be quasilinear. In this paper we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for testing if the consumer acts as if she is maximizing a quasilinear utility function over her budget set. If the...

Changes in total surplus and deadweight loss are traditional measures of economic welfare. We propose necessary and sufficient conditions for rationalizing consumer demand data with a quasilinear utility function. Under these conditions, consumer surplus is a valid measure of consumer welfare....

Afriat's original method of proof is restored by using the minmax theorem.

We show that all the fundamental properties of competitive equilibrium in Marshall's cardinal theory of value, as presented in Note XXI of the mathematical appendix to his Principles of Economics (1890), derive from the Strong Law of Demand. That is, existence, uniqueness, optimality, and global...

Studies of inequality often ignore resource allocation within the household. In doing so they miss an important element of the distribution of welfare that can vary dramatically depending on overall environmental and economic factors. Thus, measures of inequality that ignore intra household...

In this paper we develop an approach to measuring inequality and poverty that recognizes the fact that individuals within households may have both different preferences and differential access to resources. We argue that a measure based on estimates of the sharing rule is inadequate as an...

This paper studies a class of multi-self decision-making models proposed in economics, psychology, and marketing. In this class, choices arise from the set-dependent aggregation of a collection of utility functions, where the aggregation procedure satisfies some simple properties. We propose a...

By taking sets of utility functions as a primitive description of agents, we define an ordering over assumptions on utility functions that gauges their implicit measurement requirements. Cardinal and ordinal assumptions constitute two types of measurement requirements, but several standard...

This paper proposes nonparametric statistical procedures for analyzing discrete choice models of affective decision making. We make two contributions to the literature on behavioral economics. Namely, we propose a procedure for eliciting the existence of a Nash equilibrium in an intrapersonal,...