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Utilitarian Aggregation with Heterogeneous Beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine Billot
  • Xiangyu Qu

Abstract

The utilitarian aggregation rule requires social utility and beliefs to be a convex combination of individual utilities and beliefs, respectively. Since, in the case of belief heterogeneity, the standard Pareto condition is incompatible with such a separate aggregation, a new condition, called the belief-proof Pareto condition, is proposed to alleviate occurrences of spurious agreement by restricting unanimity to beliefs that can be considered reasonable by society. Then, we show, in the Anscombe-Aumann and the Savage framework, that the belief-proof Pareto condition is equivalent to separate aggregation of individual beliefs and tastes.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine Billot & Xiangyu Qu, 2021. "Utilitarian Aggregation with Heterogeneous Beliefs," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 112-123, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:13:y:2021:i:3:p:112-23
    DOI: 10.1257/mic.20180344
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    Cited by:

    1. Weijia Wang, 2025. "Preference aggregation with heterogeneous beliefs and catastrophe risk," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 146(2), pages 263-279, October.
    2. Florian Mudekereza, 2025. "Robust Social Planning," Papers 2504.07401, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2025.
    3. Askoura, Youcef & Billot, Antoine, 2021. "Social decision for a measure society," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    4. Pivato, Marcus, 2022. "Bayesian social aggregation with accumulating evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    5. Dong-Xuan, Bach & Qu, Xiangyu, 2025. "Restricted dominant unanimity and social discounting," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    6. Marcus Pivato & Élise Flore Tchouante, 2024. "Bayesian social aggregation with non-Archimedean utilities and probabilities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 77(3), pages 561-595, May.
    7. Billot, Antoine & Qu, Xiangyu, 2025. "Stationary altruism and time consistency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    8. Hayashi, Takashi, 2024. "Belief aggregation, updating and dynamic collective choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    9. Bach Dong-Xuan, 2024. "Aggregation of misspecified experts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(3), pages 923-943, November.
    10. Antoine Billot & Xiangyu Qu, 2024. "Deliberative democracy and utilitarianism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 63(3), pages 603-617, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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