IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/halshs-01021399.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Utilitarianism with Prior Heterogeneity

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine Billot

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LEMMA - Laboratoire d'économie mathématique et de microéconomie appliquée - UP2 - Université Panthéon-Assas)

  • Vassili Vergopoulos

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

Harsanyi's axiomatic justification of utilitarianism is extended to a framework with subjective and heterogenous priors. Contrary to the existing literature on aggregation of preferences under uncertainty, society is here allowed to formulate probability judgements, not on the actual state of the world as individuals do, but rather on the opinion they each have on the actual state. An extended Pareto condition is then proposed that characterizes the social utility function as a convex combination of individual ones and the social prior as the independent product of individual ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine Billot & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2014. "Utilitarianism with Prior Heterogeneity," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01021399, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-01021399
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01021399
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01021399/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chambers, Christopher P. & Hayashi, Takashi, 2006. "Preference aggregation under uncertainty: Savage vs. Pareto," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 430-440, February.
    2. Mongin, Philippe & Pivato, Marcus, 2015. "Ranking multidimensional alternatives and uncertain prospects," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 146-171.
    3. 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.
    4. Al-Najjar, Nabil I. & Weinstein, Jonathan, 2009. "Rejoinder: The €Œambiguity Aversion Literature: A Critical Assessmentâ€," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 357-369, November.
    5. Hylland, Aanund & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1979. "The Impossibility of Bayesian Group Decision Making with Separate Aggregation of Beliefs and Values," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(6), pages 1321-1336, November.
    6. Al-Najjar, Nabil I. & Weinstein, Jonathan, 2009. "The Ambiguity Aversion Literature: A Critical Assessment," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 249-284, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2020. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 77-113.
    2. Takashi Hayashi & Michele Lombardi, 2019. "Fair social decision under uncertainty and belief disagreements," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 775-816, June.
    3. Eric Danan & Thibault Gajdos & Brian Hill & Jean-Marc Tallon, 2016. "Robust Social Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2407-2425, September.
    4. Takashi Hayashi & Michele Lombardi, 2016. "Social decision under uncertainty and responsibility for beliefs," Working Papers 2016_19, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    5. Hill , Brian & Danan , Eric, 2014. "Aggregating Tastes, Beliefs, and Attitudes Under Uncertainty," HEC Research Papers Series 1057, HEC Paris.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2017. "Fair management of social risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 666-706.
    2. Federica Ceron & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2017. "Aggregation of Bayesian preferences: Unanimity vs Monotonicity," Post-Print halshs-01539444, HAL.
    3. Antoine Billot & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2016. "Aggregation of Paretian preferences for independent individual uncertainties," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(4), pages 973-984, December.
    4. Federica Ceron & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2017. "Aggregation of Bayesian preferences: Unanimity vs Monotonicity," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01539444, HAL.
    5. Zuber, Stéphane, 2016. "Harsanyi’s theorem without the sure-thing principle: On the consistent aggregation of Monotonic Bernoullian and Archimedean preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 78-83.
    6. Federica Ceron & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2017. "Aggregation of Bayesian preferences: Unanimity vs Monotonicity," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 17028, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    7. Takashi Hayashi, 2019. "What Should Society Maximise Under Uncertainty?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 446-478, December.
    8. Federica Ceron & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2019. "Aggregation of Bayesian preferences: unanimity vs monotonicity," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(3), pages 419-451, March.
    9. Ellis, Andrew, 2018. "On dynamic consistency in ambiguous games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 241-249.
    10. Sprumont, Yves, 2018. "Belief-weighted Nash aggregation of Savage preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 222-245.
    11. Gajdos, T. & Tallon, J.-M. & Vergnaud, J.-C., 2008. "Representation and aggregation of preferences under uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 68-99, July.
    12. Takashi Hayashi & Michele Lombardi, 2019. "Fair social decision under uncertainty and belief disagreements," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 775-816, June.
    13. Marc Fleurbaey, 2018. "Welfare economics, risk and uncertainty," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(1), pages 5-40, February.
    14. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2020. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 77-113.
    15. Federica Ceron & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2020. "Recursive objective and subjective multiple priors," Post-Print halshs-02900497, HAL.
    16. Eric Danan & Thibault Gajdos & Jean-Marc Tallon, 2015. "Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem with Incomplete Preferences," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 61-69, February.
    17. Baker, Erin & Bosetti, Valentina & Salo, Ahti, 2016. "Finding Common Ground when Experts Disagree: Belief Dominance over Portfolios of Alternatives," MITP: Mitigation, Innovation and Transformation Pathways 243147, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    18. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Printzis, Panagiotis, 2020. "What is the investment loss due to uncertainty?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    19. Dominiak, Adam & Duersch, Peter & Lefort, Jean-Philippe, 2012. "A dynamic Ellsberg urn experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 625-638.
    20. Marc Fleurbaey, 2010. "Assessing Risky Social Situations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 649-680, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    utilitarianism; prior heterogeneity; Pareto condition; utilitarisme; hétérogénéité préalable; condition de Pareto;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:cesptp:halshs-01021399. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.