Approval as an Intrinsic Part of Preference

Remzi Sanver

Chapter Chapter 20 in Handbook on Approval Voting, 2010, pp 469-481 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The collective decision making problem can be conceived as the aggregation of a vector of utility functions whose informational content depends on the assumptions made about the cardinality and interpersonal comparability of individual preferences. To be more explicit, we consider a non-empty set N of individuals and a non-empty set A of alternatives. Letting U(A) be the set of real-valued “utility functions” defined over A, we model the problem through an aggregation function f : U(A) N → 2 A \{Ø} The assumptions about the cardinality and interpersonal comparability of individual preferences are formalized by partitioning U(A) into information sets, while requiring f to be invariant at any two vector of utility functions which belong to the same information set. At one extreme, one can assume the existence of an absolute scale over which the utilities of individuals are measured and compared. This assumption partitions U(A) into singleton information sets, hence imposing no invariance over f. At the other extreme, one can rule out any kind of cardinal information and interpersonal comparability, in which case an information set consists of the elements of U(A) which are ordinally equivalent, i.e., induce the same ordering of alternatives for every individual.1 When cardinality and interpersonal comparability are ruled out, the problem can be modeled through an aggregation function f : W(A) N → 2 A \{Ø} where W(A) is the set of weak orders (i.e., complete and transitive binary relations) over A. We refer to this as the Arrovian model (Arrow 1950, 1951).

Keywords: Public Choice; Social Choice; Aggregation Function; Vote Rule; Weak Order (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:stcchp:978-3-642-02839-7_20

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783642028397

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-02839-7_20

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Studies in Choice and Welfare from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().