Abstract
One way to model probabilistic choices is by postulating the existence of a random variable for each alternative, representing its “utility”. This model turns out to be equivalent to one in which the choice probabilities are generated by a probability distribution on the collection of all rankings of the alternatives. The problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for such a representation is investigated for the case where only pairwise choices are given. A couple of new necessary conditions are derived, one generalizing a previously known condition.
The author wants to thank Jean-Claude Falmagne for directing his attention to this problem and Bernard Monjardet for some valuable references. This research was partially supported by AFOSR grant F49620-87-C-0131 to New York University, where the new results were obtained. The final version of this paper was written while the author was a postdoctoral fellow at the Irvine Research Unit in Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California at Irvine, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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Koppen, M. (1991). Random Utility Representations of Binary Choice Probabilities. In: Doignon, JP., Falmagne, JC. (eds) Mathematical Psychology. Recent Research in Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9728-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9728-1_10
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