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The notion of social utility is analogous to the notion of a utility function in consumer choice. However, a social welfare function is different in that it is a mapping of individual utility functions onto a single output, in a way that accounts for the judgments of everyone in a society.
For example, a state with utility profile (0,100,100) has the same minimum value as a state with utility profile (0,0,0). In this case, the egalitarian rule often uses the leximin order , that is: subject to maximizing the smallest utility, it aims to maximize the next-smallest utility; subject to that, maximize the next-smallest utility, and ...
One extra unit of utility for a starving person is not seen to be of any greater value than an extra unit of utility for a millionaire. At the other extreme is the Max-Min, or Rawlsian utility function. [8] According to the Max-Min criterion, welfare is maximized when the utility of those society members that have the least is the greatest.
A single-attribute utility function maps the amount of money a person has (or gains), to a number representing the subjective satisfaction he derives from it. The motivation to define a utility function comes from the St. Petersburg paradox: the observation that people are not willing to pay much for a lottery, even if its expected monetary gain is infinite.
An additive agent has a utility function that is an additive set function: for every additive agent i and item j, there is a value ,, such that () =, for every set Z of items. When all agents are additive, welfare maximization can be done by a simple polynomial-time algorithm: give each item j to an agent for whom v i , j {\displaystyle v_{i,j ...
The summarised formula for expected utility is () = where is the probability that outcome indexed by with payoff is realized, and function u expresses the utility of each respective payoff. [1] Graphically the curvature of the u function captures the agent's risk attitude.
[1]: 164 A useful property of the quasilinear utility function is that the Marshallian/Walrasian demand for , …, does not depend on wealth and is thus not subject to a wealth effect; [1]: 165–166 The absence of a wealth effect simplifies analysis [1]: 222 and makes quasilinear utility functions a common choice for modelling.
Robert Hall was the first to derive the effects of rational expectations for consumption. His theory states that if Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis is correct, which in short says current income should be viewed as the sum of permanent income and transitory income and that consumption depends primarily on permanent income, and if consumers have rational expectations, then any ...