Multiattribute utility functions, partial information on coefficients, and efficient choice

@article{citeulike:1597397, abstract = {Summary The expected utility analysis of decision under risk needs information on the alternatives and on the decision maker's preferences which in many practical situations are difficult to obtain. This paper presents a procedure for choosing between multiattribute risky alternatives when the probabilities of outcomes are known, the utility function is general multilinear (i.e., can be decomposed into sums and products of univariate utility functions), and there is some partial information on univariate utilities (viz. increasingness) and arbitrary partial information on the scaling coefficients. Pairwise comparisons in the set of alternatives yield a subset which is efficient under the given partial information. Additive and multiplicative utility functions are special cases of the multilinear one. The paper gives particular attention to linear partial information (LPI) on coefficients, which is obtained by standard assessment procedures. The approach can be combined with dominance procedures which use other partial information as LPI on probabilities.}, author = {Mosler, Karl }, citeulike-article-id = {1597397}, doi = {10.1007/BF01719932}, journal = {OR Spectrum}, keywords = {decision-theory, function, multi-attribute, planning, utility}, month = {June}, number = {2}, pages = {87--94}, posted-at = {2007-08-27 23:25:44}, priority = {2}, title = {Multiattribute utility functions, partial information on coefficients, and efficient choice}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01719932}, volume = {13}, year = {1991} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1597397 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1597397 TI - Multiattribute utility functions, partial information on coefficients, and efficient choice JF - OR Spectrum VL - 13 IS - 2 SP - 87 EP - 94 N2 - Summary The expected utility analysis of decision under risk needs information on the alternatives and on the decision maker's preferences which in many practical situations are difficult to obtain. This paper presents a procedure for choosing between multiattribute risky alternatives when the probabilities of outcomes are known, the utility function is general multilinear (i.e., can be decomposed into sums and products of univariate utility functions), and there is some partial information on univariate utilities (viz. increasingness) and arbitrary partial information on the scaling coefficients. Pairwise comparisons in the set of alternatives yield a subset which is efficient under the given partial information. Additive and multiplicative utility functions are special cases of the multilinear one. The paper gives particular attention to linear partial information (LPI) on coefficients, which is obtained by standard assessment procedures. The approach can be combined with dominance procedures which use other partial information as LPI on probabilities. KW - decision-theory KW - function KW - multi-attribute KW - planning KW - utility AU - Mosler, Karl PY - 1991/06/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01719932 ER -