One-Switch Independence for Multiattribute Utility Functions

Ali E. Abbas () and David E. Bell ()
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Ali E. Abbas: University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61820
David E. Bell: Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts 02163

Operations Research, 2011, vol. 59, issue 3, 764-771

Abstract: Assessment of multiattribute utility functions is significantly simplified if it is possible to decompose the function into more manageable pieces. Utility independence is a powerful property that serves well for this purpose, but if it is not appropriate in a given situation, what options does the analyst have? We review some possibilities and propose a new independence assumption based on the one-switch property. We argue that it is a natural generalization of utility independence and show how it leads to tractable multiattribute utility functions.

Keywords: one-switch; utility independence; multiattribute utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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