Reference-Dependence and Marginal Utility: Alt, Samuelson, and Bernardelli
揭示早在20世纪30年代末，阿尔特、萨缪尔森和贝尔纳代利就分别探索了将参考依赖正式纳入消费者行为理论的可能性，并分析了其与边际效用的关系及被忽视的原因。
This article shows that the possibility of formally incorporating reference-dependence into the theory of consumer behavior was explored well before Kahneman and Tversky in the early 1990s; specifically, in separate papers by Alt, Samuelson, and Bernardelli in the late 1930s. These papers emerged within a debate on the relationship between marginal utility and the ordinality/cardinality of utility. The present article identifies Alt’s, Samuelson’s, and Bernardelli’s contributions and delineates the relationship between marginal utility and reference-dependence. It also discusses the reception of their ideas by other economists and suggests some reasons for their neglect.