Collective Rationality and Monotone Path Division Rules

We impose the axiom Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives on division rules for the conflicting claims problem. With the addition of Consistency and Resource Monotonicity, this characterizes a family of rules which can be described in three different but intuitive ways. First, a rule is identified with a fixed monotone path in the space of awards, and for a given claims vector, the path of awards for that claims vector is simply the monotone path truncated by the claims vector. Second, a rule is identified with a set of parametric functions indexed by the claimants, and for a given claims problem, each claimant receives the value of his parametric function at a common parameter value, but truncated by his claim. Third, a rule is identified with an additively separable, strictly concave social welfare function, and for a given claims problem, the amount awarded is the maximizer of the social welfare function subject to the constraint of choosing a feasible award. This third way of describing the family of rules is similar to Lensberg’s (1987) solution for bargaining problems applied to conflicting claims problems.