The Possibility of Anonymous Social Orderings Using Curvature of Indifference Hypersurfaces

Deirdre Haskell, Jeremiah Hurley and Junying Zhao

Department of Economics Working Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: This paper concerns the aggregation of individual preferences into a social ordering. Working in a higher-dimensional economic environment where an indifference hypersurface is the level set of a utility function representing a preference relation, we give axiomatic conditions under which a function on the indifference hypersurfaces can be used to define a rational anonymous social ordering function. We show that the curvature of the indifference hypersurfaces can potentially be used as such a function, and discuss a possible economic interpretation of the curvature. The minmax-like definition of our social ordering function coincides with the Rawlsian difference principle under certain circumstances.

Keywords: Preference aggregation; Social ordering function; Independence of irrelevant alternatives; Indifference hypersurface; Curvature; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D70 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2023-06

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