A major virtue of von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities, for example, in the theory of general financial equilibrium (GFE), is that they ensure time consistency: consumption-portfolio plans (for the future) are in fact executed (in the future) — assuming that there is perfect foresight about relevant endogenous variables. This paper proposes an alternative to expected utility, one which also delivers consistency between plan and execution — and more. In particular, the formulation affords an extremely natural setting for introducing extrinsic uncertainty. The key idea is to divorce the concept of filtration (of the state space) from any considerations involving probability, and then concentrate attention on nested utilities of consumption looking forward from any date-event: utility today depends only on consumption today and prospective utility of consumption tomorrow, utility tomorrow depends only on consumption tomorrow and prospective utility of consumption the day after tomorrow, and so on.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania in its series PIER Working Paper Archive with number
07-036.
David Cass, 2007.
"Utility-Based Utility,"
PIER Working Paper Archive
08-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 04 Jan 2008.
[Downloadable!]
Find related papers by JEL classification: D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty D91 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: