Topological methods in cardinal utility theory

In this paper we shall study the concept of cardinal utility in three different situations (stochastic objects of choice, stochastic act of choice; independent factors of the action set) by means of the same mathematical result that gives a topological characterization of three families of parallel straight lines in a plane. This result, proved first by G. Thomsen [24] under differentiability assumptions, and later by W. Blaschke [2] in its present general form (see also W. Blaschke and G. Bol [3]), can be briefly described as follows. Consider the topological image G of a two-dimensional convex set and three families of curves in that set such that (a) exactly one curve of each family goes through a point of…