A characterization of acyclic preferences on countable sets

Abstract

In this paper a new numerical representation of preferences (by means of set-valued real functions) is proposed. Our representation extends the usual utility function (in case preferences are preorder-type) as well as the pairwise representation (in case preferences are interval-order type). Then, we provide a characterization of acyclic preference relations on countable sets as those admitting a set-valued numerical representation.