The consumer’s demand functions defined to study contingent consumption plans

Abstract

AbstractGiven two probability distributions expressing returns on two single risky assets of a portfolio, we innovatively define two consumer’s demand functions connected with two contingent consumption plans. This thing is possible whenever we coherently summarize every probability distribution being chosen by the consumer. Since prevision choices are consumption choices being made by the consumer inside of a metric space, we show that prevision choices can be studied by means of the standard economic model of consumer behavior. Such a model implies that we consider all coherent previsions of a joint distribution. They are decomposed inside of a metric space. Such a space coincides with the consumer’s consumption space. In this paper, we do not consider a joint distribution only. It follows that we innovatively define a stand-alone and double risky asset. Different summary measures of it characterizing consumption choices being made by the consumer can then be studied inside of a linear space over $${\mathbb {R}}$$ R . We show that it is possible to obtain different summary measures of probability distributions by using two different quadratic metrics. In this paper, our results are based on a particular approach to the origin of the variability of probability distributions. We realize that it is not standardized, but it always depends on the state of information and knowledge of the consumer.