On ranking opportunity sets in economic environments (Q1584553)

The authors show how freedom of choice can be reflected in an agent's opportunity set. Contrary to most papers on this subject the authors assume that the opportunity sets are not finite. Freedom of choice has a non-utilitarian value; this can be demonstrated by assuming that ``every consumer is ordered to consume the same commodity bundle that she chose earlier from her budget set in the former competitive economy''. The paper analyzes two scenarios. First, ranking compact opportunity sets in terms of freedom is done without any information about preferences. Axioms are given which imply ranking of opportunity sets can be based on the ``size'' of these sets. Second, a reference set of preference orderings is assumed, which can be interpreted ``as the set of all orderings a reasonable person may have''. ``A modified set of axioms lead to a new real-valued representation with a different intuitive significance''.