The Law of Demand and Risk Aversion.

This note proposes a necessary and sufficient condition on a utility function to guarantee that it generates a demand function satisfying the law of demand. This condition can be interpreted in terms of an agent's attitude towards lotteries in commodity space. As an application, we show that when an...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Econometrica Vol. 71; no. 2; pp. 713 - 722
Autor principal: Quah, John K.-H.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell March 2003
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:This note proposes a necessary and sufficient condition on a utility function to guarantee that it generates a demand function satisfying the law of demand. This condition can be interpreted in terms of an agent's attitude towards lotteries in commodity space. As an application, we show that when an agent has an expected utility function, her demand for securities satisfies the law of demand if her coefficient of relative risk aversion does not vary by more than 4. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.