Operators for the adjudication of conflicting claims

William Thomson and Chun-Hsien Yeh

No 531, RCER Working Papers from University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER)

Abstract: We consider the problem of dividing some amount of an infinitely divisible and homogeneous resource among agents having claims on this resource that cannot be jointly honored. A "rule" associates with each such problem a feasible division. Our goal is to uncover the structure of the space of rules. For that purpose, we study "operators" on the space, that is, mappings that associate to each rule another one. Duality, claims truncation, attribution of minimal rights, and convex combinations are the four operators we consider. We first establish a number of results linking these operators, such as idempotence, commutativity, and distributivity. Then, we determine which properties of rules are preserved under each of these operators, and which are not.

Keywords: Conflicting claims; Division rules; Operators; Minimal rights; Maximal claims; Duality; Convexity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C79 D63 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-06
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Journal Article: Operators for the adjudication of conflicting claims (2008)
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