Cardinality and Utilitarianism through Social Interactions

Shiri Alon and Ehud Lehrer

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2026, vol. 18, issue 1, 208-53

Abstract: We provide axioms that relate the preferences of each group in a society to the preferences of the subgroups contained in them. These axioms yield cardinal utility indices for each individual and a representation of group preferences as the group-dependent weighted sum of the utility indices of the members of that group. We show that these weights are group independent whenever one additional axiom and a mild linear independence assumption are satisfied.

JEL-codes: D11 D71 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1257/mic.20240068

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