IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-03453458.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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)

Author

Listed:
  • Amélie Fievet

    (UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Abstract

This contribution aims to highlight a neglected aspect of Samuelson's famous 1937 paper "A Note on Measurement of Utility". Although the 1937 paper is usually regarded as the foundation of discounted utility theory, and rightly so, it is primarily concerned with utility measurement and deals only indirectly with decision over timeintertemporal issues appearing as a by-product of the realisation of a unique utility measure. But the treatment of discounted utility in turn influenced Samuelson's understanding of cardinality. Cardinality appears here as the result of a cognitive ability that manifests when agents face a decision experiment over time in which they are compelled to cardinalize their utility functions. The result is the weak plausibility of cardinality in a more general context, such that, contrary to the usual views, we may say that Samuelson's ordinalist approach was already in the making in 1937.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03453458
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03453458
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03453458/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. E. H. Phelps Brown, 1934. "Notes on the Determinateness of the Utility Function: I," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 2(1), pages 66-69.
    2. Anand, Paul & Pattanaik, Prasanta & Puppe, Clemens (ed.), 2009. "The Handbook of Rational and Social Choice," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199290420.
    3. 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.
    4. R. G. D. Allen, 1935. "A Note on the Determinateness of the Utility Function," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 2(2), pages 155-158.
    5. F. Zeuthen, 1937. "On the Determinateness of the Utility Function," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(3), pages 236-239.
    6. George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 1992. "Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice: Evidence and an Interpretation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 573-597.
    7. Allais Maurice, 1990. "Cardinal Utility," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-38, June.
    8. R. H. Strotz, 1955. "Myopia and Inconsistency in Dynamic Utility Maximization," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 23(3), pages 165-180.
    9. Paul A. Samuelson, 1938. "The Numerical Representation of Ordered Classifications and the Concept of Utility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 6(1), pages 65-70.
    10. Harro Bernardelli, 1934. "Notes on the Determinateness of the Utility Function: II," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 2(1), pages 69-75.
    11. Shane Frederick & George Loewenstein & Ted O'Donoghue, 2002. "Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 351-401, June.
    12. Chipman, John S., 1977. "An empirical implication of Auspitz-Lieben-Edgeworth-Pareto complementarity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 228-231, February.
    13. Paul A. Samuelson, 1937. "A Note on Measurement of Utility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(2), pages 155-161.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ivan Moscati, 2012. "How cardinal utility entered economic analysis during the Ordinal RevolutionLength: 31 pages," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf1205, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
    2. Dorian Jullien, 2016. "Under Uncertainty, Over Time and Regarding Other People: Rationality in 3D," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-20, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    3. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Enrico Diecidue & Olivier l’Haridon, 2017. "Patience and time consistency in collective decisions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 181-208, March.
    4. Faralla, Valeria & Novarese, Marco & Ardizzone, Antonella, 2017. "Framing Effects in Intertemporal Choice: A Nudge Experiment," MPRA Paper 82086, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Tomáš Želinský, 2015. "Nekonzistentnosť časových preferencií ľudí z arginalizovaných rómskych komunít [On inconsistency of time preferences of people from the marginalised roma communities]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2015(2), pages 204-222.
    6. Read, Daniel & Roelofsma, Peter H. M. P., 2003. "Subadditive versus hyperbolic discounting: A comparison of choice and matching," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 140-153, July.
    7. Dorian Jullien, 2018. "Under Risk, Over Time, Regarding Other People: Language and Rationality within Three Dimensions," Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, in: Including a Symposium on Latin American Monetary Thought: Two Centuries in Search of Originality, volume 36, pages 119-155, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    8. Maria Alessandra Antonelli & Valeria De Bonis & Angelo Castaldo & Alessandrao Gandolfo, 2022. "Sin goods taxation: an encompassing model," Public Finance Research Papers 52, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    9. Tyson, Christopher J., 2008. "Management of a capital stock by Strotz's naive planner," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2214-2239, July.
    10. Christian König-Kersting & Stefan T. Trautmann, 2023. "Grit, Discounting, & Time Inconsistency," Working Papers 2023-12, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    11. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2018. "Foundations for Intertemporal Choice," CESifo Working Paper Series 6913, CESifo.
    12. Simone Galperti & Bruno Strulovici, 2013. "The Logical Consistency of Time Inconsistency: A Theory of Forward-Looking Behavior," Discussion Papers 1571, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    13. Scholten, Marc & Read, Daniel, 2006. "Beyond discounting: the tradeoff model of intertemporal choice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 22710, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Han, Ruokang & Takahashi, Taiki, 2012. "Psychophysics of time perception and valuation in temporal discounting of gain and loss," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(24), pages 6568-6576.
    15. Ebert, Sebastian & Wei, Wei & Zhou, Xun Yu, 2020. "Weighted discounting—On group diversity, time-inconsistency, and consequences for investment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    16. Pastore, Chiara & Schurer, Stefanie & Tymula, Agnieszka & Fuller, Nicholas & Caterson, Ian, 2020. "Economic Preferences and Obesity: Evidence from a Clinical Lab-in-Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 13915, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Bjarne Robberstad & John Cairns, 2007. "Time Preferences for Health in Northern Tanzania," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 73-88, January.
    18. Epper, Thomas, 2015. "Income Expectations, Limited Liquidity, and Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice," Economics Working Paper Series 1519, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    19. Kathryn Zeiler, 2019. "Mistaken about mistakes," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 9-27, August.
    20. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Cédric Gutierrez & Emmanuel Kemel, 2018. "Temporal discounting of gains and losses of time: An experimental investigation," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 1-28, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Paul Samuelson; discounted utility; measure of utility;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:journl:halshs-03453458. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.