Measuring Utility

Measuring Utility
Author: Ivan Moscati
Publisher:
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2019
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199372764

Utility is a key concept in the economics of individual decision-making. However, utility is not measurable in a straightforward way. As a result, from the very beginning there has been debates about the meaning of utility as well as how to measure it. This book is an innovative investigation of how these arguments changed over time. Measuring Utility reconstructs economists' ideas and discussions about utility measurement from 1870 to 1985, as well as their attempts to measure utility empirically. The book brings into focus the interplay between the evolution of utility analysis, economists' ideas about utility measurement, and their conception of what measurement in general means. It also explores the relationships between the history of utility measurement in economics, the history of the measurement of sensations in psychology, and the history of measurement theory in general. Finally, the book discusses some methodological problems related to utility measurement, such as the epistemological status of the utility concept and its measures. The first part covers the period 1870-1910, and discusses the issue of utility measurement in the theories of Jevons, Menger, Walras and other early utility theorists. Part II deals with the emergence of the notions of ordinal and cardinal utility during the period 1900-1945, and discusses two early attempts to give an empirical content to the notion of utility. Part III focuses on the 1945-1955 debate on utility measurement that was originated by von Neumann and Morgenstern's expected utility theory (EUT). Part IV reconstructs the experimental attempts to measure the utility of money between 1950 and 1985 within the framework provided by EUT. This historical and epistemological overview provides keen insights into current debates about rational choice theory and behavioral economics in the theory of individual decision-making and the philosophy of economics.

Additive and Polynomial Representations

Additive and Polynomial Representations
Author: David H. Krantz
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2006-12-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0486453146

All of the sciences — physical, biological, and social — have a need for quantitative measurement. This influential series, Foundations of Measurement, established the formal foundations for measurement, justifying the assignment of numbers to objects in terms of their structural correspondence. Volume I introduces the distinct mathematical results that serve to formulate numerical representations of qualitative structures. Volume II extends the subject in the direction of geometrical, threshold, and probabilistic representations, and Volume III examines representation as expressed in axiomatization and invariance.

The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson

The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson
Author: Paul Anthony Samuelson
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 794
Release: 1966
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262190213

"It is a measure of Professor Samuelson's preeminence that the sheer scale of his work should be so much taken for granted," observes a reviewer in the Economist who goes on to note that "a cynic might add that it would have been better for Professor Samuelson to write less merely to give others a chance to write at all." These volumes contain virtually all of Professor Paul A. Samuelson's contributions to economic theory through mid-1964 - a total of 129 papers. Included are his classic articles on such topics as revealed preference, factor-price equalization, and public goods; as well as some articles which until now have only been privately circulated or "buried" in Festschriften, such as "Market Mechanisms and Maximization" and "The Structure of a Minimum Equilibrium System." The articles have been grouped together into five books, compiled in two volumes. The books, in turn have been divided into sections, each of which contains articles on the same or closely related topics. Within the sections the articles are arranged chronologically. The graduate student and professional economist will welcome The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson as a valuable addition to their libraries.

The Works of Irving Fisher Vol 12

The Works of Irving Fisher Vol 12
Author: William J Barber
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2024-10-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1040235948

This 14-volume edition contains the key works and commentary by leading Fisher scholars, allowing modern readers access to the major issues in Fisherian economic thought.

Studies in the Methodology and Foundations of Science

Studies in the Methodology and Foundations of Science
Author: Patrick Suppes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 940173173X

The twenty-three papers collected in tbis volume represent an important part of my published work up to the date of this volume. I have not arranged the paper chronologically, but under four main headings. Part I contains five papers on methodology concerned with models and measurement in the sciences. This part also contains the first paper I published, 'A Set of Independent Axioms for Extensive Quantities', in Portugaliae Mathematica in 1951. Part 11 also is concerned with methodology and ineludes six papers on probability and utility. It is not always easy to separate papers on probability and utility from papers on measurement, because of the elose connection between the two subjects, but Artieles 6 and 8, even though they have elose relations to measurement, seem more properly to belong in Part 11, because they are concerned with substantive questions about probability and utility. The last two parts are concerned with the foundations of physics and the foundations of psychology. I have used the term foundations rather than philosophy, because the papers are mainly concerned with specific axiomatic formulations for particular parts of physics or of psychology, and it seems to me that the termfoundations more appropriately describes such constructive axiomatic ventures. Part 111 contains four papers on the foundations of physics. The first paper deals with foundations of special relativity and the last three with the role ofprobability in quantum mechanics.

A Dynamic Approach to Economic Theory

A Dynamic Approach to Economic Theory
Author: Ragnar Frisch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2013-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136927859

This book contains a set of notes prepared by Ragnar Frisch for a lecture series that he delivered at Yale University in 1930., complete with an introdutory essay from Olav Bjerkholt and Duo Qin placing the notes in their historical context.

Cardinalism

Cardinalism
Author: M. Allais
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401108889

THE CONCEPTION OF THIS VOLUME This volume, Cardinalism, has been initiated by Ole Hagen, and is now published due to his perseverance and to Kluwer Academic Publishers. Because of various activities and duties, my contribution to the general conception of this volume has only been formal, and all the credit for it is due to Ole Hagen. I should also emphasize that the responsibility for the year's delay in the publishing of this volume is entirely mine, for two reasons. First of all, I have been involved in many works in very different fields. Second, the English translation of my 1943 contribution to the concept of cardinal utility took some time. The points of view the reader will find in this volume are often different and sometimes contradictory, but this can only increase the interest of its reading. In any case, this is not the editors' part to side with or against. Thus contributions to this volume are presented as they have been submit ted to the editors. Of course, this does not mean that they entirely agree with the analyses presented. MAURICE ALLAIS M. Allais and O. Hagen (eds.), Cardinalism, vii INTRODUCTION Everyone's conscious choices are assumed to reflect their preferences in different situations. For some purposes it serves the theorist's preference for simplicity to assume that a person's life style can be described by the values of some concrete variables, such as quantities of goods available.

Paul Samuelson

Paul Samuelson
Author: Robert A. Cord
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137568127

A significant part of economics as we know it today is the outcome of battles that took place in the post-war years between Keynesians and monetarists. In the US, the focus of these battles was often between the neo-Keynesians at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Chicago monetarists. The undisputed leader of the MIT Keynesians was Paul A. Samuelson, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and arguably of all time. Samuelson’s output covered a vast number of subjects within economics, the quality of theseoften pioneering contributions unmatched in the modern era. The volume focuses both on how Samuelson’s work has been developed by others and on how that work fits into subsequent developments in the various fields of speciality within which Samuelson operated.

Problems and Methods of Econometrics

Problems and Methods of Econometrics
Author: Ragnar Frisch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2009-06-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134057644

The development of economics changed dramatically during the twentieth century with the emergence of econometrics, macroeconomics and a more scientific approach in general. One of the key individuals in the transformation of economics was Ragnar Frisch, professor at the University of Oslo and the first Nobel Laureate in economics in 1969. He was a co-founder of the Econometric Society in 1930 (after having coined the word econometrics in 1926) and edited the journal Econometrics for twenty-two years. The discovery of the manuscripts of a series of eight lectures given by Frisch at the Henri Poincaré Institute in March–April 1933 on The Problems and Methods of Econometrics will enable economists to more fully understand his overall vision of econometrics. This book is a rare exhibition of Frisch’s overview on econometrics and is published here in English for the first time. Edited and with an introduction by Olav Bjerkholt and Ariane Dupont-Kieffer, Frisch’s eight lectures provide an accessible and astute discussion of econometric issues from philosophical foundations to practical procedures. Concerning the development of economics in the twentieth century and the broader visions about economic science in general and econometrics in particular held by Ragnar Frisch, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of economics and econometrics.