Strength of preference and cardinal utility

Summary. This paper provides simpler and more general preference foundations for difference representations than known before and shows how to obtain cardinal utility from those difference representations. In addition, this paper unifies all earlier derivations of cardinal utility by showing that they are implied as direct corollaries.Received: 9 November 2002, Revised: 27 December 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: C6.The author particularly thanks Peter P. Wakker and an anonymous referee for many helpful comments and suggestions. The author also thanks Han Bleichrodt and Horst Zank. The paper was partly written during a visit at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. The author thanks the Dutch Science Foundation NWO for financial support under grant 425-11-003.