IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/uclawp/779.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Multiperson Utility

Author

Listed:
  • Lloyd S. Shapley

    (UCLA)

  • Manel Baucells

    (UCLA)

Abstract

We approach the problem of preference aggregation by endowing both individuals and coalitions with partially-ordered or incomplete cardinal preferences. Consistency across preferences for coalitions comes in the form of the Extended Pareto Rule: if two disjoint coalitions A and B prefer x to y, then so does the coalition A*B. The Extended Pareto Rule has important consequences for the social aggregation of individual preferences. Restricting attention to the case of complete individual preferences, and assuming complete preferences for some pairs of agents (interpersonal comparisons of utility units), we discover that the Extended Pareto Rule imposes a "no arbitrage" condition in the terms of utility comparison between agents. Furthermore, if all the individuals and pairs have complete preferences and certain non-degeneracy conditions are met, then we witness the emergence of a complete preference ordering for coalitions of all sizes. The corresponding utilities are a weighted sum of individual utilities, with the n-1 independent weights obtained from the preferences of n-1 pairs forming a spanning tree in the group. Keywords: Preference aggregation, Incomplete preferences, Extended Pareto Rule.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Lloyd S. Shapley & Manel Baucells, 1998. "Multiperson Utility," UCLA Economics Working Papers 779, UCLA Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cla:uclawp:779
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/workingpapers/wp779.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Saposnik, Rubin, 1975. "Social Choice with Continuous Expression of Individual Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(4), pages 683-690, July.
    2. Kalai, Ehud & Schmeidler, David, 1977. "Aggregation Procedure for Cardinal Preferences: A Formulation and Proof of Samuelson's Impossibility Conjecture," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(6), pages 1431-1438, September.
    3. Amrita Dhillon & Jean-Francois Mertens, 1999. "Relative Utilitarianism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(3), pages 471-498, May.
    4. Sen, Amartya, 1970. "Interpersonal Aggregation and Partial Comparability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(3), pages 393-409, May.
    5. Peter A. Diamond, 1967. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparison of Utility: Comment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75, pages 765-765.
    6. Schmeidler, David, 1969. "Competitive Equilibria in Markets with a Continuum of Traders and Incomplete Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(4), pages 578-585, October.
    7. Dubra, Juan & Maccheroni, Fabio & Ok, Efe A., 2004. "Expected utility theory without the completeness axiom," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 118-133, March.
    8. Costis Skiadas, 1997. "Conditioning and Aggregation of Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(2), pages 347-368, March.
    9. Luca Rigotti & Chris Shannon, 2005. "Uncertainty and Risk in Financial Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 203-243, January.
    10. James S. Dyer & Rakesh K. Sarin, 1979. "Group Preference Aggregation Rules Based on Strength of Preference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(9), pages 822-832, September.
    11. Fishburn, Peter C, 1973. "A Mixture-Set Axiomatization of Conditional Subjective Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(1), pages 1-25, January.
    12. Frank DeMeyer & Charles R. Plott, 1971. "A Welfare Function Using "Relative Intensity" of Preference," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 85(1), pages 179-186.
    13. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63, pages 309-309.
    14. Edi Karni, 2003. "Impartiality and interpersonal comparisons of variations in well-being," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(1), pages 95-111, August.
    15. Sobel, Joel, 2001. "Manipulation of Preferences and Relative Utilitarianism," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 196-215, October.
    16. Luce, R Duncan & Krantz, David H, 1971. "Conditional Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(2), pages 253-271, March.
    17. Manel Baucells & Rakesh K. Sarin, 2003. "Group Decisions with Multiple Criteria," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(8), pages 1105-1118, August.
    18. Baucells, Manel & Shapley, Lloyd S., 2008. "Multiperson utility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 329-347, March.
    19. Truman F. Bewley, 1986. "Knightian Decision Theory: Part 1," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 807, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Sen, Amartya K, 1977. "On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(7), pages 1539-1572, October.
    21. Amrita Dhillon, 1998. "Extended Pareto rules and relative utilitarianism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 15(4), pages 521-542.
    22. Rakesh Kumar Sarin, 1982. "Strength of Preference and Risky Choice," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 982-997, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cla:uclawp:779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (David K. Levine). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.