Maxitive functions with respect to general orders

Abstract

In decision-making, maxitive functions are used for worst-case and best-case evaluations. Maxitivity gives rise to a rich structure that is well-studied in the context of the pointwise order. In this article, we investigate maxitivity with respect to general preorders and provide a representation theorem for such functions. The results are illustrated for different stochastic orders in the literature, including the usual stochastic order, the increasing convex/concave order, and the dispersive order.