Intensity-Efficient and Intensity-Positional Allocations

Georgios Gerasimou

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Abstract: This paper studies the allocation problem in environments where, in addition to having ordinal preferences, agents also have *ordinal intensities*: they can say "I prefer a to b more than I prefer c to d" without necessarily being able to claim *how much* more. A rank-based criterion for interpersonal comparisons of ordinal intensities is introduced for this analytical environment. Building on it, the concepts of *intensity-dominated*, *intensity-efficient* and *intensity-positional* allocations are defined.Two allocations are related by intensity dominance if they assign the same two items to the same two agents but in a "flipped" way, and one allocation assigns the commonly preferred item in any such pair to the agent who prefers it more. An allocation is "intensity-efficient" if it is Pareto-efficient and not intensity-dominated. Distinctly, an allocation is "intensity-positional" if it maximizes the agents' total "intensity-rank scores". The latter extend standard Borda scores to environments where consecutively-ranked items do not necessarily feature identical intensity differences. The paper analyses intensity-efficient and intensity-positional allocations, and clarifies how they differ from those based on the utilitarian or Borda rules.

Date: 2020-11, Revised 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-upt
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