IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v57y1990i3p477-502..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bolker-Jeffrey Expected Utility Theory and Axiomatic Utilitarianism

Author

Listed:
  • John Broome

Abstract

This paper introduces the Bolker-Jeffrey version of expected utility theory, which differs in several important respects from the versions commonly used by economists. Within the Bolker-Jeffrey theory, the paper proves a theorem first proved by Harsanyi: if social preferences are coherent and Paretian, and individual preferences are coherent, then social utility can be taken to be the sum of individual utilities. But the paper shows that in the Bolker-Jeffrey theory the proof requires very stringent assumptions. It assesses the significance of this fact.

Suggested Citation

  • John Broome, 1990. "Bolker-Jeffrey Expected Utility Theory and Axiomatic Utilitarianism," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(3), pages 477-502.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:57:y:1990:i:3:p:477-502.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2298025
    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. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2003. "Harsanyi's Social Aggregation Theorem : A Multi-Profile Approach with Variable-Population Extensions," Cahiers de recherche 03-2003, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    2. Denant-Boèmont, L. & Petiot, R., 2003. "Information value and sequential decision-making in a transport setting: an experimental study," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 365-386, May.
    3. Gravel, Nicolas & Marchant, Thierry & Sen, Arunava, 2018. "Conditional expected utility criteria for decision making under ignorance or objective ambiguity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 79-95.
    4. Mongin, Philippe, 1998. "The paradox of the Bayesian experts and state-dependent utility theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 331-361, April.
    5. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2016. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," MPRA Paper 72578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Nicolas Gravel, 2019. "Richard Bradley, Decision Theory with a Human Face," Post-Print hal-02471153, HAL.
    7. L. Denant-Boèmont & R. Petiot, 2003. "Information value and sequential decision-making in a transport setting: an experimental study," Post-Print hal-02422690, HAL.
    8. Dorian Jullien, 2013. "Asian Disease-type of Framing of Outcomes as an Historical Curiosity," GREDEG Working Papers 2013-47, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    9. David McCarthy & Kalle Mikkola & Teruji Thomas, 2019. "Aggregation for potentially infinite populations without continuity or completeness," Papers 1911.00872, arXiv.org.
    10. Richard Bradley, 2003. "Axiomatic Bayesian Utilitarianism," Working Papers hal-00242956, HAL.
    11. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A., 1999. "Harsanyi's social aggregation theorem for state-contingent alternatives1," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 365-387, November.
    12. Jordan Howard Sobel, 1998. "Ramsey's Foundations Extended to Desirabilities," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 231-278, June.
    13. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2020. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 77-113.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:oup:restud:v:57:y:1990:i:3:p:477-502.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    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.