1. PROGRESS IN UTILITY AND RISK THEORY At the First International Congress of Utility and Risk Theory in Oslo 1982 (FUR-82) it appeared to be a widespread feeling among the participants that the conference signalled something like a paradigm shift in the field. This does not necessarily mean that old truths were discarded and replaced by new ones, but rather that new theories and new empirical evidence were brought forth, compelling old theories to be critically analyzed from new angels. Some of the papers presented at FUR-82 have been published by Reidel in 1983 in a volume edited by Stigum and Wenst0p. The present volume contains com mentaries on a number of the papers presented at the conference together with broader outlines of current views on the theory. The observation that utility and risk theory now appears to be in a state of rapid change has prompted us to choose the title PROGRESS IN UTILITY AND RISK THEORY for the book, in the belief that science always moves from poorer to more advanced paradigms or from weaker to more forceful theories. In other words, change is usually progress, even though intermediate stages in a para digm shift may be bewildering, to say the least.

In this volume we present some of the papers delivered at FUR-IV - the Fourth International Conference on Founda tions and Applications of Utility, Risk and Decision Theory in Budapest, June 1988. The FUR Conferences have provided an appreciated forum every two years since 1982 within which scientists can report recent issues and prospective applications of decision theory, and exchange ideas about controversial questions of this field. Focal points of the presented papers are: expected utility versus alterna tive utility models, concepts of risk and uncertainty, developments of game theory, and investigations of real decision making behaviour under uncertainty and/or in risky situations. We hope that this sample of papers will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers who are interested in and fami liar with this interesting and exciting issues of decision theory. A wide range of theoretical and practical questions is considered in papers included in this volume, and many of them closely related to economics. In fact, there were two Nobel-Laureates in economics among the participants: I. Herbert A. Simon (1978) and Maurice Allais (1988), who won the prize just after the conference. His paper deals with problems of cardinal utility. After a concise overview of the history and theory of cardinal utility he gives an estimate of the invariant cardinal utility function for its whole domain of variation (i. e.

The Second International Conference on Foundations of Utility and Risk Theory was held in Venice, June 1984. This volume presents some of the papers delivered at FUR-84. (The First International Conference, FUR-82, was held in Oslo and some of the papers presented on that occasion were published by Reidel in the volume Foundations of Utility and Risk Theory with Applications, edited by Bernt P. Stigum and Fred Wenst~p). The theory of choice under uncertainty involves a vast range of controversial issues in many fields like economics, philosophy, psychology, mathematics and statistics. The idea of discussing these problems in international conferences has been successful: two conferences have been held and others will follow. The climate of the debate has changed in the meantime, partly as a result of these conferences. It is no more only a question of attacking or defending the neo-Bernoullian assumptions, but also of proposing wider generalizations and including new elements in the analysis of the decision process. For instance Amartya Sen - comparing the two current notions of rationality, internal consistency and self-interest pursuit introduces the concept of reasoning and considers the irrationality which may result from the failure of a positive correspondence between reasoning and choice or from a limited capacity of reasoning. Rationality is also considered with respect to the controversial axiom of strong independence. John C. Harsanyi introduces the concept of practical certainty, i. e.

THE CONCEPTION OF THIS VOLUME This volume, Cardinalism, has been initiated by Ole Hagen, and is now published due to his perseverance and to Kluwer Academic Publishers. Because of various activities and duties, my contribution to the general conception of this volume has only been formal, and all the credit for it is due to Ole Hagen. I should also emphasize that the responsibility for the year's delay in the publishing of this volume is entirely mine, for two reasons. First of all, I have been involved in many works in very different fields. Second, the English translation of my 1943 contribution to the concept of cardinal utility took some time. The points of view the reader will find in this volume are often different and sometimes contradictory, but this can only increase the interest of its reading. In any case, this is not the editors' part to side with or against. Thus contributions to this volume are presented as they have been submit ted to the editors. Of course, this does not mean that they entirely agree with the analyses presented. MAURICE ALLAIS M. Allais and O. Hagen (eds.), Cardinalism, vii INTRODUCTION Everyone's conscious choices are assumed to reflect their preferences in different situations. For some purposes it serves the theorist's preference for simplicity to assume that a person's life style can be described by the values of some concrete variables, such as quantities of goods available.

A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

This collection of articles contains contributions from a few of Werner Leinfellner's many friends and colleagues. Some of them are former students of Werner's. Others were colleagues of his at various American and European universities. Further, some have come to know Werner through his research, his long-standing editorship of Theory and Deci sion and his extensive participation in international conferences and congresses. The following articles are new to this volume. The areas covered are those in which Werner continues to play an active professional role. We offer them as a tribute to the many and multi-faceted contributions to the scientific enterprise for which Werner Leinfellner is so widely known. We believe such a festschrift to be fitting and long overdue. Because of the breadth of Werner's professional associations, it was difficult to select representatives from among his many spheres of influence. We apologize to the many scholars who could not be in cluded because of time and space considerations. Finally, we wish to express appreciation to Dean John Guilds of the University of Arkansas for providing financial support early on in the evolution of this project, to Jennifer Bauman for her bravura performance in copy-editing the manuscripts, and to our publisher at Reidel for bringing this volume to press.

For several decades, the orthodox economics approach to understanding choice under risk has been to assume that each individual person maximizes some sort of personal utility function defined over purchasing power. This new volume contests that even the best wisdom from the orthodox theory has not yet been able to do better than supposedly naïve models that use rules of thumb, or that focus on the consumption possibilities and economic constraints facing the individual. The authors assert this by first revisiting the origins of orthodox theory. They then recount decades of failed attempts to obtain meaningful empirical validation or calibration of the theory. Estimated shapes and parameters of the "curves" have varied erratically from domain to domain (e.g., individual choice versus aggregate behavior), from context to context, from one elicitation mechanism to another, and even from the same individual at different time periods, sometimes just minutes apart. This book proposes the return to a simpler sort of scientific theory of risky choice, one that focuses not upon unobservable curves but rather upon the potentially observable opportunities and constraints facing decision makers. It argues that such an opportunities-based model offers superior possibilities for scientific advancement. At the very least, linear utility – in the presence of constraints - is a useful bar for the "curved" alternatives to clear.