The mean-variance utility postulates that random variables with the same mean and variance should be equally desirable. This paper presents and discusses necessary and sufficient preference-based axioms for the existence of mean-variance utility in which any condition on variances but...

This paper studies necessary and sufficient preference-based conditions for differentiability of risk averse (prudent, or temperate) von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions. The very idea to devise those conditions is based on the reverse claim of an old observation by Arrow that a risk-averse...