Continuous Multi-Utility Representations of Preorders and the Chipman Approach

Abstract

Chipman contended, in stark contrast to the conventional view, that, utility is not a real number but a vector, and that it is inherently lexicographic in nature. On the other hand, in recent years continuous multi-utility representations of a preorder on a topological space, which proved to be the best kind of continuous representation, have been deeply studied. In this paper, we first state a general result, which guarantees, for every preordered topological space, the existence of a lexicographic order-embedding of the Chipman type. Then, we combine the Chipman approach and the continuous multi-utility approach, by stating a theorem that guarantees, under certain general conditions, the coexistence of these two kinds of continuous representations.