Universal interactive preferences

TL;DR: The authors showed that a universal preference type space exists under much more general conditions than those postulated by Epstein and Wang (1996) and showed that preferences can be encoded by a countable collection of continuous functionals, while the preferences themselves need not necessarily be continuous or regular, e.g., in the case of lexicographic preferences.

Abstract: We prove that a universal preference type space exists under much more general conditions than those postulated by Epstein and Wang (1996). To wit, it is enough that preferences can be encoded by a countable collection of continuous functionals, while the preferences themselves need not necessarily be continuous or regular, like, e.g., in the case of lexicographic preferences. The proof relies on a far-reaching generalization of a method developed by Heifetz and Samet (1998).