IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hop/hopeec/v46y2014i4p677-693.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reference-Dependence and Marginal Utility: Alt, Samuelson, and Bernardelli

Author

Listed:
  • Marek Hudik

Abstract

This article shows that the possibility of formally incorporating reference-dependence into the theory of consumer behavior was explored well before Kahneman and Tversky in the early 1990s; specifically, in separate papers by Alt, Samuelson, and Bernardelli in the late 1930s. These papers emerged within a debate on the relationship between marginal utility and the ordinality/cardinality of utility. The present article identifies Alt’s, Samuelson’s, and Bernardelli’s contributions and delineates the relationship between marginal utility and reference-dependence. It also discusses the reception of their ideas by other economists and suggests some reasons for their neglect.

Suggested Citation

  • Marek Hudik, 2014. "Reference-Dependence and Marginal Utility: Alt, Samuelson, and Bernardelli," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 46(4), pages 677-693, Winter.
    • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:4:p:677-693
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/46/4/677.full.pdf+html
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Amélie Fievet, 2021. "Decision over Time as a By-Product of a Measure of Utility: A Reappraisal of Paul Samuelson's "A Note on Measurement of Utility" (1937)," Post-Print halshs-03453458, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:4:p:677-693. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45614 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.