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...

The paper argues that the canonical dichotomy between cardinal utility and ordinal utility is inadequate to tell the history of utility theory, and that a third form of utility consistent with the so-called classical understanding of measurement should be added to the traditional picture....

The paper reconstructs the history of the experimental attempts to measure the cardinal utility of money between 1950 and 1985 within the framework provided by expected utility theory (EUT). It is shown that this history displays a definite trajectory: from the confidence in EUT and the...