----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
There has been a long tradition of vigorously denying that utility can be compared across
people, or even very cardinally within a person, which is what is implied by the standard
indifference curve analysis.
 
I would note that we may be moving away from this on several fronts as behavioral
economics gets taken more seriously.  Three points:
1)  The assumptions for the standard story do not seem to hold very well, including some
of the simplest, such as, do people even know what their own preferences are ordinally?
2)  Cardinal utility is creeping back in a funny way in the form of studies of happiness,
for which there is even now a multi-disciplinary journal (Journal of Happiness Studies).
There is now a large data base on responses to surveys asking questions like "are you
happy?" (scale of 1 to 10 or whatever), with lots of papers now appearing even in econ
journals on happiness over time, across countries, income groups, etc.  Although nobody is
saying so, this looks a lot like a sneaky way to do cardinal utility.
3)  In neuroeconomics we are now pinpointing specific areas of brains where people are
feeling pleasure and also making certain kinds of decisions.   We may be getting near
having a "utility thermometer," although I suspect that we will never get there fully for
lots of well known reasons.
 
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]