(1) Department of Economics, Andrew Young School of Economics, Georgia State University, Atlanta , GA 30303, USA
Abstract:
This paper examines how freedom of choice as reflected in an agents opportunity sets can be measured in economic environments where opportunity sets are linear budget sets in the non-negative orthant of the n-dimensional real space. Three axioms, Symmetry, Monotonicity and Invariance of Scaling Effects, are proposed for this purpose and the measure based on volumes of budget sets is characterized.I am grateful to Prasanta K. Pattanaik for his encouragement and fruitful discussions over many years on this and related subjects. The first draft of this paper was written while I was visiting the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. I would like to thank its hospitality. Helpful comments of a referee are gratefully acknowledged.
s opportunity sets can be measured in economic environments where opportunity sets are linear budget sets in the non-negative orthant of the n-dimensional real space. Three axioms, Symmetry, Monotonicity and Invariance of Scaling Effects, are proposed for this purpose and the measure based on volumes of budget sets is characterized.I am grateful to Prasanta K. Pattanaik for his encouragement and fruitful discussions over many years on this and related subjects. The first draft of this paper was written while I was visiting the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. I would like to thank its hospitality. Helpful comments of a referee are gratefully acknowledged.