Axiomatic Foundations for a Class of Generalized Expected Utility: Algebraic Expected Utility
This work unifies various utility theories into a general framework, offering incremental theoretical insights for decision theory researchers.
The paper provides axiomatic foundations for algebraic expected utility, a generalized form of expected utility, by showing that standard axioms lead to its representation in a von Neumann-Morgenstern setting with plausibility measures on semirings.
Expected Utility: Algebraic Expected Utility In this paper, we provide two axiomatizations of algebraic expected utility, which is a particular generalized expected utility, in a von Neumann-Morgenstern setting, i.e. uncertainty representation is supposed to be given and here to be described by a plausibility measure valued on a semiring, which could be partially ordered. We show that axioms identical to those for expected utility entail that preferences are represented by an algebraic expected utility. This algebraic approach allows many previous propositions (expected utility, binary possibilistic utility,...) to be unified in a same general framework and proves that the obtained utility enjoys the same nice features as expected utility: linearity, dynamic consistency, autoduality of the underlying uncertainty measure, autoduality of the decision criterion and possibility of modeling decision maker's attitude toward uncertainty.