The generalized Fechner-Thurstone direct utility function and some of its uses (Q1801283)

This book represents a collection of papers, some of them published already and some of them due to be published in journals. Very little effort must have been spent to re-edit the papers into a book form, because, as a book, it is not well written: For example, on page 66 with only few words the use of the names Fechner and Thurstone is explained for a weighted geometric mean, which is commonly used under different names in the economic literature. The authors push the idea that the weights of this geometric mean should be functions of (exogenous) prices and income, if used as a utility function, but a sound explanation for this, and whether current or past prices and income should influence the weights, is missing. Throughout the book there are sections where parameters are written without being defined, some of them set to zero with no further explanation as ``no loss of generality'' in other sections, and concepts and abbreviations are used which are defined - if at all - lateron in the book. This makes the book hard to read and it distracts from the possible sound research contribution of the authors.