> a more satisfying theory would be able to derive the behaviours from the problem itself See my other comment about prescriptive vs. descriptive. You can post

> a more satisfying theory would be able to derive the behaviours from the problem itself See my other comment about prescriptive vs. descriptive. You can postulate some utility and derive the theoretical behaviour. You can observe some behaviour and try to infer the utility that would be consistent with it (assuming that the behaviour is rational, for some definition of rationality). EE can only do the former. Facing the same problem, people is not allowed to have different preferences. EE prescribes what rational behaviour is. EUT and EE are not incompatible. When solving an optimization problem EUT can use the same arguments that EE does to find the utility function to use. I don't think these results are new, but even if they were they wouldn't invalidate EUT. The point is that in the "prescriptive" setting the EUT framework can be used with whatever utility function makes sense for the problem. The basic theory doesn't tell you either what's the utility of inundating a valley to build a dam, or the utility of a floods if you don't. When you use EUT to find a solution to a problem you have to think about the problem.