Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application 12th Edition by Walter Nicholson,Christopher Snyder

Exercise 29

The notion of utility is an "ordinal" one for which it is assumed that people can rank combinations of goods as to their desirability, but that they cannot assign a unique numerical (cardinal) scale for the goods that quantifies "how much" one combination is preferred to another. For each of the following ranking systems, describe whether an ordinal or a cardinal ranking is being used: (a) military or academic ranks; (b) prices of vintage wines; (c) rankings of vintage wines by the French Wine Society; (d) press rankings of the "Top Ten" football teams; (e) results of the U.S. Open Golf Championships (in which players are ranked by the number of strokes they take); (f) results of the NCAA basketball tournament (which is conducted using a draw that matches teams against one another until a final winner is found).