I am not sure Michael Nuwer is correct. If both of us buy a candybar for a dollar, why should we get the same marginal utility?
On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 11:34:27PM -0500, Michael Nuwer wrote: > ken hanly wrote: > > But my understanding is that utility cannot be > >measured except in any but ordinal terms that is by > >ranking preferences. If marginal utility can be > >represented by dollars then doesn't that imply that > >there can be interpersonal comparisons of utility? > > What can be compared, in the mainstream view, is the relative marginal > utilities, but not the utility. We both may pay $3.00 per gallon for > gasoline (the marginal value) and I might buy twice as much as you, but > that doesn't tell us anything about how much utility you get nor how > much utility I get from the purchase. > > BTW: Sen claims that "interpersonal comparisons of various types can be > fully axiomatized and exactly incorporated in social choice > procedures...." And, although we may not be able to "put everyone's > utilities in an exact one-to-one correspondence with each other..., [i]t > can be shown that there may be no general need for terribly refined > interpersonal comparisons for arriving at definite social decisions.... > Interpersonal comparisons need not be confined to 'all-or-none' > dichotomies." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
