Given a bargaining problem, the `relative utilitarian' (RU) solution maximizes the sum total of the bargainer's utilities, after having first renormalized each utility function to range from zero to one. We show that RU is `optimal' in two very different senses. First, RU is the maximal element (over the set of all bargaining solutions) under any partial ordering which satisfies certain axioms of fairness and consistency; this result is closely analogous to the result of Segal (2000). Second, RU offers each person the maximum expected utility amongst all rescaling-invariant solutions, when it is applied to a random sequence of future bargaining problems which are generated using a certain class of distributions; this is somewhat reminiscent of the results of Harsanyi (1953) and Karni (1998).
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
2637.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Dhillon, A. & Mertens, J.F., 1993.
"Relative Utilitarianism,"
Papers
9348, Universite catholique de Louvain - Center for Operations Research and Economics (CORE).