Events that occur over a period of time can be described either as sequences of outcomes at discrete times or as functions of outcomes in an interval of time. This paper presents discounting models for events of the latter type. Conditions on preferences are shown to be satisfied if and only if...

Cost-benefit and health policy studies often model a consequence occurring over time as a continuous stream of events. Such a consequence is measured by the rates at which events occur or by the states that occur, and the value of the consequence is measured by an integral. This paper presents a...

Models of preferences between outcomes over continuous time are important for individual, corporate, and social decision making, e.g., medical treatment, infrastructure development, and environmental regulation. This paper presents a foundation for such models. It shows that conditions on...

Policy studies often evaluate health for a population by summing the individuals’ health as measured by a scale that is ordinal or that depends on risk attitudes. We develop a method using a different type of preferences, called preference intensity or cardinal preferences, to construct scales...

Events that occur over a period of time can be described either as sequences of outcomes at discrete times or as functions of outcomes in an interval of time. This paper presents discounting models for events of the latter type. Conditions on preferences are shown to be satisfied if and only if...

A result of John Harsanyi concerns the aggregation of individuals' preferences into social preferences. The result states that if the individuals in a society and the society as a whole have preference relations that compare probability distributions on a set of outcomes, and the preference...

Erratum to author's paper "Conditions on Risk Attitude for a Single Attribute," Management Sci. 27 (2, February) (1981).

This paper discusses conditions on risk attitudes that imply special types of expected-utility functions. First, conditions are described that correspond to different choices of an arithmetic operation that measures the importance of changes in consequences. Second, conditions are described such...

Cost-benefit and risk analysis studies that model tradeoffs between the present and the distant future by means of present value discounting have been criticized for according the future, and thus future generations, far too little importance. This paper presents an alternative means of modeling...