- Title Pages
- Preface
- 1 Separability
- 2 Two‐Stage Budgeting
- 3 Separable Utility and Aggregation
- 4 Notes on Divisia Indices
- 5 Consumer Budgets and Price Indices
- 6 Professor Friedman's Consumption Function and the Theory of Choice
- 7 Quasi‐Separable Preferences, Costs, and Technologies
- 8 Separability and Linear Engel Curves
- 9 The Concavity of Additive Utility Functions
- 10 Pseudo‐Separability
- 11 Conditions for Additive Separability
- 12 The Structure of Utility Functions
- 13 Conditions for Generalized Additive Separability
- 14 Facing an Uncertain Future
- 15 Community Preference Fields
- 16 Klein Aggregates and Conventional Index Numbers
- 17 On a Class of Preference Fields
- 18 Capital Aggregation in Vintage Models
- 19 Measuring the Quantities of Fixed Factors
- 20 Some Engel Curves
- 21 More Measures for Fixed Factors
- 22 Muellbauer's Representative Consumer
- 23 Assembling Efficient Organizations?
- 24 Aggregates for Variable Goods: An Application of Duality
- 25 Aggregation in the Short and Long Run
- 26 Long‐Run Aggregates Under Constant Returns
- References
The Concavity of Additive Utility Functions
The Concavity of Additive Utility Functions
- Chapter:
- (p.127) 9 The Concavity of Additive Utility Functions
- Source:
- Separability and Aggregation
- Author(s):
W. M. Gorman (Contributor Webpage)
, C. Blackorby, A. F. Shorrocks- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This paper is from an unpublished typescript from the University of North Carolina (1970). When confronted with additivity, it is far more convenient to use profit functions than cost functions or indirect utility functions. The reason for this is that if the objective function is additive then the resulting profit function is also additive, so one does not lose all of the explicit original structure in moving to the dual. To be able to do this, however, each of the functions in question must be concave. However, concavity is typically not an easy assumption to accept in utility theory. The question addressed in this paper is whether concavity is more plausible in the case of additive separability.
Keywords: additive separability, additive utility functions, additivity, concavity, profit functions, separability
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- 1 Separability
- 2 Two‐Stage Budgeting
- 3 Separable Utility and Aggregation
- 4 Notes on Divisia Indices
- 5 Consumer Budgets and Price Indices
- 6 Professor Friedman's Consumption Function and the Theory of Choice
- 7 Quasi‐Separable Preferences, Costs, and Technologies
- 8 Separability and Linear Engel Curves
- 9 The Concavity of Additive Utility Functions
- 10 Pseudo‐Separability
- 11 Conditions for Additive Separability
- 12 The Structure of Utility Functions
- 13 Conditions for Generalized Additive Separability
- 14 Facing an Uncertain Future
- 15 Community Preference Fields
- 16 Klein Aggregates and Conventional Index Numbers
- 17 On a Class of Preference Fields
- 18 Capital Aggregation in Vintage Models
- 19 Measuring the Quantities of Fixed Factors
- 20 Some Engel Curves
- 21 More Measures for Fixed Factors
- 22 Muellbauer's Representative Consumer
- 23 Assembling Efficient Organizations?
- 24 Aggregates for Variable Goods: An Application of Duality
- 25 Aggregation in the Short and Long Run
- 26 Long‐Run Aggregates Under Constant Returns
- References