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Duality between direct and indirect preferences

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Summary

This paper develops a duality theory for preference orders, and highlights important differences with respect to the cardinal utility approach. Our main result is a symmetric duality theorem, under the minimal hypotheses, between direct and indirect preferences. In contrast to the cardinal theory, we also find that these conditions do not completely characterize the class of indirect preference orders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Economica, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, E-08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Juan -Enrique Martinez-Legaz

  2. Departamento de Economica, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, c/Madrid, 126-128, E-28903, Getafe, Madrid, Spain

    Manuel S. Santos

Authors
  1. Juan -Enrique Martinez-Legaz
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  2. Manuel S. Santos
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Additional information

We are grateful to an editor for helpful remarks. This work was partially supported by DGICYT (Spain), Project PS89-OO58.

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Martinez-Legaz, J.E., Santos, M.S. Duality between direct and indirect preferences. Econ Theory 3, 335–351 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01212921

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01212921

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