A model of consumer behavior has been formulated by using an additive utility function and the hedonic pricing approach, in a virtual market. Since, there is a time lag between ordering and purchasing products (goods and services) online and receiving them, it means the consumer makes decision under uncertainty. The level of satisfaction with products with distinctive characteristics is describ...

This paper addresses the problem of determining when coordination is beneficial. I describe a negative externality game containing a “worsening parameter and develop a framework linearizing this parameter for tractable examination. The worsening parameter can be classified according to “own effect” – changing the marginal utility of a players own action, “opponent effect” – altering the margina...

In game theory, a Correlated Equilibrium (CE) is an equilibrium concept that generalizes the more well-known Nash Equilibrium. If the game is represented as a graphical game, the computational complexity of computing an optimum CE is exponential in the tree-width of the graph. In settings where this exact computation is not feasible, it is desirable to approximate the properties of the CE, such...

People show empathic responses to others' pain, yet how they choose to apportion pain between themselves and others is not well understood. To address this question, we observed choices to reapportion social allocations of painful stimuli and, for comparison, also elicited equivalent choices with money. On average people sought to equalize allocations of both pain and money, in a manner which i...

We could reasonably expect society to give at least the same weight to the marginal utility of the poor as to the rich, and to the marginal utility of the ill as compared to the healthy. Whilst Hansen et al. [Journal of Health Economics (2004)], may be said to link CEA and CBA within a welfarist framework, the assumptions they require are inconsistent with these types of ethical preferences. Th...

This paper describes a study of agent bidding strategies, assuming combinatorial valuations for complementary and substitutable goods, in three auction environments: sequential auctions, simultaneous auctions, and the Trading Agent Competition (TAC) Classic hotel auction design, a hybrid of sequential and simultaneous auctions. The problem of bidding in sequential auctions is formulated as an M...

The approximated cost-benefit function of pollution abatement from two integrated assessment models are employed in constructing of social welfare functions (SWF). Following a normative approach and evaluating equally the environmental goods in rich and poor countries, furthermore using distributional weights, a relation between elasticity of marginal utility e and inequality aversion parameter...

Levedahl (1995) claims that marginal 'welfare stigma' causes a dollar of food to provide less utility if bought with food stamps rather than cash, and that this explains why, in the United States, the marginal propensity to consume food out of food stamps is larger than that out of income. This hypothesis has been advanced to explain the so-called 'cash-out puzzle': the empirical observation th...

In the matter of investment forecasting skill it is often supposed that more is automatically preferable to less. In other words, the marginal utility of improving one’s forecasting accuracy is monotonically positive. However it is also commonly believed that large scale speculative capital flows (presumably driven by skilled investors) are a major contributor to financial market volatility. Th...

In this historical review we distinguish between two broad categories of value theories, objective and subjective, which focus respectively on the conditions of production and on the preferences of consumers. The objective approach to value theory is discussed with respect to classical political economy and the labour theory of value and the Sraffian revival of classical value theory in the twe...