IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/theord/v51y2001i2p125-144.html

Production under Uncertainty and Choice under Uncertainty in the Emergence of Generalized Expected Utility Theory

Author

Listed:
  • John Quiggin

Abstract

This paper presents a personal view of the interaction between the analysis of choice under uncertainty and the analysis of production under uncertainty. Interest in the foundations of the theory of choice under uncertainty was stimulated by applications of expected utility theory such as the Sandmo model of production under uncertainty. This interest led to the development of generalized models including rank-dependent expected utility theory. In turn, the development of generalized expected utility models raised the question of whether such models could be used in the analysis of applied problems such as those involving production under uncertainty. Finally, the revival of the state-contingent approach led to the recognition of a fundamental duality between choice problems and production problems. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001

Suggested Citation

  • John Quiggin, 2001. "Production under Uncertainty and Choice under Uncertainty in the Emergence of Generalized Expected Utility Theory," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 125-144, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:theord:v:51:y:2001:i:2:p:125-144
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1015546825052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1015546825052
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1015546825052?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Machina, Mark J., 1989. "Comparative statics and non-expected utility preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 393-405, April.
    2. Luenberger, David G., 1992. "Benefit functions and duality," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 461-481.
    3. Larry Epstein, 1978. "Production Flexibility and the Behaviour of the Competitive Firm under Price Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(2), pages 251-261.
    4. Weymark, John A., 1981. "Generalized gini inequality indices," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 409-430, August.
    5. Milton Friedman & L. J. Savage, 1948. "The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 279-279.
    6. Quiggin John & Wakker Peter, 1994. "The Axiomatic Basis of Anticipated Utility: A Clarification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 486-499, December.
    7. Fishburn, Peter C, 1978. "On Handa's "New Theory of Cardinal Utility" and the Maximization of Expected Return," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(2), pages 321-324, April.
    8. Sandmo, Agnar, 1971. "On the Theory of the Competitive Firm under Price Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 65-73, March.
    9. Quiggin, John, 1982. "A theory of anticipated utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 323-343, December.
    10. Chambers,Robert G. & Quiggin,John, 2000. "Uncertainty, Production, Choice, and Agency," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521622448, August.
    11. Yaari, Menahem E, 1987. "The Dual Theory of Choice under Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 95-115, January.
    12. Quiggin, John & Chambers, Robert G, 2001. "The Firm under Uncertainty with General Risk-Averse Preferences: A State-Contingent Approach," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 5-20, January.
    13. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Yaari, Menahem E., 1969. "Some remarks on measures of risk aversion and on their uses," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 315-329, October.
    15. Allais Maurice, 1990. "CARDINAL UTILITY: History, Empirical Findings, and Applications An Overview," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 3-40, June.
    16. Dardanoni, Valentino, 1988. "Optimal Choices under Uncertainty: The Case of Two-Argument Utility Functions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(391), pages 429-450, June.
    17. Machina, Mark J & Schmeidler, David, 1992. "A More Robust Definition of Subjective Probability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(4), pages 745-780, July.
    18. Bertsekas, Dimitri P., 1974. "Necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of an optimal portfolio," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 235-247, June.
    19. Coes, Donald V, 1977. "Firm Output and Changes in Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 249-251, March.
    20. Quiggin, John, 1991. "Comparative Statics for Rank-Dependent Expected Utility Theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 339-350, December.
    21. Gilboa, Itzhak, 1987. "Expected utility with purely subjective non-additive probabilities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 65-88, February.
    22. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    23. Machina, Mark J, 1982. "A Stronger Characterization of Declining Risk Aversion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1069-1079, July.
    24. Feder, Gershon, 1977. "The impact of uncertainty in a class of objective functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 504-512, December.
    25. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel (ed.), 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780444850133.
    26. repec:bla:ecorec:v:58:y:1982:i:161:p:174-76 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. Wakker, Peter & Tversky, Amos, 1993. "An Axiomatization of Cumulative Prospect Theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 147-175, October.
    28. J. Hirshleifer, 1965. "Investment Decision under Uncertainty: Choice—Theoretic Approaches," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 79(4), pages 509-536.
    29. Quiggin, John & Chambers, Robert G, 1998. "Risk Premiums and Benefit Measures for Generalized-Expected-Utility Theories," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 121-137, November.
    30. Handa, Jagdish, 1977. "Risk, Probabilities, and a New Theory of Cardinal Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 97-122, February.
    31. James Tobin, 1969. "Comment on Borch and Feldstein," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 36(1), pages 13-14.
    32. Quiggin, John & Horowitz, John, 1995. "Time and Risk," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 37-55, January.
    33. Peter Wakker & Daniel Deneffe, 1996. "Eliciting von Neumann-Morgenstern Utilities When Probabilities Are Distorted or Unknown," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(8), pages 1131-1150, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Perry, Neil & Shankar, Sriram, 2017. "The State-contingent Approach to the Noah's Ark Problem," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 65-72.
    2. Md. Monirul Islam & Faroque Ahmed & Abdulla Al Mahmud & Muhammad Shahbaz, 2025. "The role of rare earth and metallic mineral prices and sovereign inflation-linked bonds in AI-driven fintech industrial development amid the Russia–Ukraine conflict: A dynamic quantile analysis approach," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-46, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Enrico Diecidue & Horst Zank, 2022. "Introduction to the Special Issue in Honor of Peter Wakker," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(3), pages 433-444, April.
    2. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2006. "Les nouveaux modèles de décision dans le risque et l’incertain : quel apport ? [The new models of decision under risk or uncertainty : What approach?]," MPRA Paper 25442, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Machina, Mark J, 2001. "Payoff Kinks in Preferences over Lotteries," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 207-260, November.
    4. Karni, Edi & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2015. "Ambiguity and Nonexpected Utility," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    5. Veronika Köbberling & Peter P. Wakker, 2003. "Preference Foundations for Nonexpected Utility: A Generalized and Simplified Technique," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 395-423, August.
    6. Izhakian, Yehuda, 2017. "Expected utility with uncertain probabilities theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 91-103.
    7. Elisabeth Jardin, 1996. "Problèmes d'assurance et utilité décumulative," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 47(4), pages 921-935.
    8. Enrico G. De Giorgi & Ola Mahmoud, 2016. "Diversification preferences in the theory of choice," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 39(2), pages 143-174, November.
    9. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Horst Zank, 2023. "Source and rank-dependent utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 949-981, May.
    10. Liang Zou, 2006. "An Alternative to Prospect Theory," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 7(1), pages 1-28, May.
    11. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2006. "Les Nouveaux Modèles de Décision dans le Risque et l’Incertain : Quel Apport ? [The New Models of Decision Under Risk or Uncertainty : What Approach?]," MPRA Paper 76954, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Schmidt, Ulrich & Zank, Horst, 2009. "A simple model of cumulative prospect theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3-4), pages 308-319, March.
    13. Karni, Edi & Schmeidler, David, 1990. "Utility Theory and Uncertainty," Foerder Institute for Economic Research Working Papers 275480, Tel-Aviv University > Foerder Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Diecidue, Enrico & Wakker, Peter P, 2001. "On the Intuition of Rank-Dependent Utility," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 281-298, November.
    15. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    16. Jean-Pascal Gayant, 1995. "Généralisation de l'espérance d'utilité en univers risqué : représentation et estimation," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 46(4), pages 1047-1061.
    17. repec:rza:wpaper:296 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Sudeep Bhatia & Graham Loomes & Daniel Read, 2021. "Establishing the laws of preferential choice behavior," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(6), pages 1324-1369, November.
    19. Border, Kim C. & Segal, Uzi, 1997. "Coherent Odds and Subjective Probability," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9717, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    20. Ulrich Schmidt & Horst Zank, 2012. "A genuine foundation for prospect theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 97-113, October.
    21. Rolf Aaberge, 2011. "Empirical rules of thumb for choice under uncertainty," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(3), pages 431-438, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:kap:theord:v:51:y:2001:i:2:p:125-144. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.