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Conditioning and Aggregation of Preferences

Costis Skiadas

Abstract

This paper develops a general framework for modeling choice under uncertainty that extends subjective expected utility to include nonseparabilities, state-dependence, and the effect of subjective or ill defined consequences. This is accomplished by not including consequences among the formal primitives. Instead, the effect of consequences is modeled indirectly, through conditional preferences over acts. The main results concern the aggregation of conditional utilities to form an unconditional utility, including the case of additive aggregation. Applications, obtained by further specifying the structure of acts and conditional preferences, include disappointment, regret, and the subjective value of information.