On a functional equation arising from joint-receipt utility models (Q1577680)

The authors solve the functional equation \[ F\biggl(x+G \bigl(t (H\mid q-x) \bigr)\biggr)= S\bigl(A(t) K(x),B(t) K(y)\bigr), \] \(t\in [0,1]\) under certain natural monotonicity and injectivity assumptions explicitly listed as (i)--(viii) (and later (ix)). This is an extension of earlier work in which \(A(t)=1-t\) and \(B(t)=t\). The principal results involve proving that \(\log H\) is concave and also using Lebesgue's theorem on the differentiability of monotone functions to deduce the differentiability of \(\Gamma(t)\), defined as \(({A(t) \over B(1)t^\delta})^{1/\delta}\). The final result is too lengthy to include here. Suffice it that there are essentially only two cases depending on whether \(H(x)= \alpha x^\lambda\) or \(\alpha|e^{\beta x}-1 |^\lambda\) (it has been shown that these are the only two possibilities for \(H)\).