Diminishing mariginal utility and risk preferences Diminishing marginal utility is a concept only in cardinal utility theory rather than ordinal utility theory. As diminishing marginal utility implies a concave shape of the utility function, does it necessarily mean that agents with diminishing marginal utility must be risk-averse (also has a function with a concave shape)? 

Does cardinal utility theory assume the law of diminishing marginal utility in all of this theory? Could you have increasing marginal utility within cardinal utility theory?
Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green Proposition 6.C.1 (p. 187) says that for an expected utility maximizer with a Bernoulli utility function $u(\cdot)$ on amounts of money, saying that "the decision maker is risk averse" is equivalent to "$u(\cdot)$ is concave". 

However, these other assumptions matter. A concave utility function isn't enough. Diminishing marginal utility in amounts of money doesn't have to imply risk aversion. For example, with gamble $(F)$ taking two values $W_L,\: P(W_L) = \theta$  and $W_H&gt;W_L,\:P(W_H) = 1 - \theta$, and a utility function $u{}$ with diminishing marginal utility in wealth, consider this person's welfare function over risky lotteries $(V)$:
$$V(F, u(), \theta) = u(W_H)$$
This person is not risk averse. They love risk (for example, they prefer a risky lottery to the expected value of that lottery). But, in situations without risk, they have diminishing marginal utility of wealth.