Transforming Ordinal Riskless Utility into Cardinal Risky Utility: A Comment on Chung, Glimcher, and Tymula (2019)

Abstract

Chung, Glimcher, and Tymula (2019) observed both consumers’ choices over commodity bundles and choices under risk. They assumed a cardinal riskless utility function V representing consumer choices and a cardinal risky utility function U.The two were inconsistent. This note shows that the two functions can be reconciled if we assume that V is ordinal. Then one utility function U can accommodate both risky and riskless choices. (JEL C91, D12, D81)