Robertsʼ Theorem with neutrality: A social welfare ordering approach

Debasis Mishra and Arunava Sen

Games and Economic Behavior, 2012, vol. 75, issue 1, 283-298

Abstract: We consider dominant strategy implementation in private values settings, when agents have multi-dimensional types, the set of alternatives is finite, monetary transfers are allowed, and agents have quasi-linear utilities. We focus on private-value environments. We show that any implementable and neutral social choice function must be a weighted welfare maximizer if the type space of every agent is an m-dimensional open interval, where m is the number of alternatives. When the type space of every agent is unrestricted, Robertsʼ Theorem with neutrality (Roberts, 1979) becomes a corollary to our result. Our proof technique uses a social welfare ordering approach, commonly used in aggregation literature in social choice theory. We also prove the general (affine maximizer) version of Robertsʼ Theorem for unrestricted type spaces of agents using this approach.

Keywords: Dominant strategy mechanism design; Robertsʼ Theorem; Affine maximizers; Social welfare ordering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Working Paper: Roberts' theorem with neutrality: A Social welfare ordering approach (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:75:y:2012:i:1:p:283-298

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2011.11.005

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