Based on the correspondence between Paul Samuelson, Leonard Jimmie Savage, Milton Friedman and Jacob Marschak between May and September 1950, the article reconstructs the joint intellectual journey that led Samuelson to accept expected utility theory and Savage to revise his initial motivations...

In the history of decision theory Daniel Ellsberg is known because his seminal paper “Risk, ambiguity and the Savage axioms” presented the counterexample to Bayesian decision-making that got the normative value of the theory into trouble. An assessment of Ellsberg's contribution in the more...

The paper studies the origin, content and impact of two experiments to measure the utility of money, namely that performed by Mosteller and Nogee in 1948-1949 and the one carried out by Davidson, Suppes, and Siegel in 1954. Both experiments relied on expected utility theory (EUT), and both...

The paper discusses the role of George L. S. Shackle in fostering an unconventional approach to individual decision making. Shackle's peculiar place in the history of economics is attested by the fact that, over the period going from von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games up to early...

De tous les problèmes conçus par la théorie de la décision, le paradoxe d'Allais est peut-être celui qui aura suscité l'intérêt le plus persistant. La théorie y a consacré assez de travaux techniques remarquables pour qu'il soit désormais possible à l'histoire et à la philosophie...

In recent years most Austrian developments have argued for a definitive shift away from the search for equilibrium constructs and in favor of the analysis of those institutions which favor ordered outcomes of the market process. These developments imply an inevitable withdrawal from...

The paper reconstructs the connections between the evolution of Patrick Suppes’ measurement theory from 1951 to 1958 and the research in utility analysis he conducted between 1953 and 1957 within the Stanford Value Theory Project. In particular, the paper shows that Suppes’ superseding of...

The paper compares the two main approaches to decision-making under uncertainty in the early 1950s, Wald's minimax theory (Wald 1950) and Savage's subjective expected utility theory (Savage 1954), from the viewpoint of postwar neoclassical economics. It is argued that, while obvious reasons led...

This paper discusses the evolution of decision theory after Savage's Foundations. Two developments are examined. First, it is presented the rationale of Shackle's proposal to abandon probabilistic decision making. Second, it is discussed the axiomatisation provided by the non-additive...

This paper assesses the rationale of George Shackle's argument against Bayesian decision making in the light of recent developments of modern decision theory. The focus is on the so-called non-additive probability approach to decision theory under uncertainty, which, not unlike Shackle's...