Axiomatization for an Expected Utility Model with Endogenously Determined Goals

Abstract

In [7] a "goal-control expected utility model" was formulated which allows the decision maker to specify his acts in the form of "controls" (partial contingency plans) and to simultaneously choose goals and controls in end-mean pairs. It was shown that the Savage expected utility model, the Marschak-Radner team model, the Bayesian statistical decision model, and the standard optimal control model can be viewed as special cases of this model. In this paper the goal-control expected utility representation for the goal-control model primitives is axiomatized.