Ranking Ranking Rules

Barak Medina, Shlomo Naeh and Uzi Segal
Additional contact information
Barak Medina: Hebrew University
Shlomo Naeh: Hebrew University

No 770, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: Transitivity is a fundamental requirement for consistency. Legal systems, especially when composed over time and by different agencies, may encounter non-transitive cycles. This paper discusses a new solution to such cycles, namely setting the hierarchy of the relevant rules or preferences. The hierarchy determines the sequence of applying the rules or preferences, and thus enables avoiding non-transitive cycles. The paper provides a formal generalization of this solution, and demonstrates its possible implementation to anti-discrimination laws. It is also shown that this solution can be traced to the Rabbinic literature, starting with the Mishnah and the Talmud (1st–5th c CE).

Keywords: transitivity; cycles; Talmud (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01-03, Revised 2012-02-27
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp770.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ranking Ranking Rules (2013)
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:boc:bocoec:770

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum (baum@bc.edu).