Utilities, preferences, and substantive goods

Utilities, Preferences, and Substantive Goods

SYNOPSIS Part I. Two approaches to utilitv theorly: happiness theory and preference theory.

Utilities , Preferences and Choice

Goals, Desires, Utilities and Preferences

In this paper we study the logic of goals, which are formalized as desires with an utilitarian semantics. In our framework goals have a dual character, because they are constraints on utility functions as well as constructors of these utility functions. The non-monotonic reasoning related to the constructors reeects that goals are used as heuristic approximations of preferences in decision maki...

Preferences, Utilities, and Quantitative Judgments

This paper is concerned with a major hiatus in prescriptive decision analysis, which of course includes portions of the AI preferences field when used in interactions with human beings. In such settings, all multi-attribute decision aids must elicit some sort of preference ordering, and this entails quantitative judgments. Therein lies the rub: since all quantitative judgments involve cognitive...

Dividing goods and bads under additive utilities

When utilities are additive, we uncovered in our previous paper [1] many similarities but also surprising differences in the behavior of the familiar Competitive rule (with equal incomes), when we divide (private) goods or bads.The rule picks in both cases the critical points of the product of utilities (or disutilities) on the efficiency frontier, but there is only one such point if we share g...