Revealed favorability, indirect utility, and direct utility
Abstract This paper studies the axiomatic foundations of the indirect utility function, based upon a revealed preference approach. A chain of comparisons of budgets is regarded as giving a relation on the price-income space (a revealed favorability relation) rather than a relation on the commodity space (a revealed preference relation). The weak and strong axioms of revealed favorability are introduced by analogy with the weak and strong axioms of revealed preference, and the relationship between the former two axioms is investigated. The indirect and direct utility functions are then derived on the basis of the strong axiom of revealed favorability. Neither the continuity property of the demand function nor the convex property of its range is required for the approach taken in the paper.