IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1534.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Universal Choice Spaces and Expected Utility: A Banach-type Functorial Fixed Point

Author

Listed:
  • Stelios Arvanitis

    (Department of Economics, AUEB)

Abstract

This paper utilizes a Banach-type fixed point theorem in a functorial context to develop Universal Choice Spaces for addressing decision problems, focusing on expected utility and preference uncertainty. This generates an infinite sequence of optimal selection problems involving probability measures on utility sets. Each solution at a given stage addresses the preference ambiguity from the previous stage, enabling optimal choices at that level. The Universal Choice Space is characterized as a collection of finite-dimensional vectors of probability distributions, with the mth component being an arbitrary probability measure relevant to the mth stage of the problem. The space is derived as the canonical fixed point of a suitable endofunctor on an enriched category and simultaneously as the colimit of the sequence of iterations of this functor, starting from a suitable object.

Suggested Citation

  • Stelios Arvanitis, 2025. "Universal Choice Spaces and Expected Utility: A Banach-type Functorial Fixed Point," Working Paper 1534, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1534
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/wpaper/qed_wp_1534.pdf
    File Function: First version 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Expected utility; ambiguity of preferences; infinite regress; enriched category; endofunctor; canonical fixed point; initial algebra; colimit; universal choice space;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:qed:wpaper:1534. 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    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.