Interpersonal comparisons of utility for 2 of 3 types of people

This article argues that there is a natural solution to carry out interpersonal comparisons of utility when the theory of gambles is supplemented with a group operation of joint receipts. If so, three types of people can exist, and the two types having multiplicative representations of joint receipt have, in contrast to most utility theories, absolute scales of utility. This makes possible, at least in principle, meaningful interpersonal comparisons of utility with desirable properties, thus resolving a long standing philosophical problem and having potentially important implications in economics. Two behavioral criteria are given for the three classes of people. At this point the relative class sizes are unknown.     

Bare preference and interpersonal utility comparisons

From time to time it has been proposed to use just noticeable preference intervals as standard intervals upon which to base interpersonal utility comparisons. Such proposals have met with a number of difficulties due especially to the discovery that such intervals are difficult to take as representing equal differences in utility even for one individual.In this paper I suggest conditions upon individual utility functions which, if satisfied, would make such bare preference intervals useful as a basis for interpersonal utility comparisons even if the intervals are not interpreted as representing equal utility differences for any single individual.     

Welfare inequalities and Rawlsian axiomatics

This paper is concerned with ordinal comparisons of welfare inequality and its use in social welfare judgements, especially in the context of Rawls' difference principle. In Section 1 the concept of ordinal inequality comparisons is developed and a theorem on ordinal comparisons of welfare inequality for distributional problems is noted. Section 2 is devoted to Harsanyi's (1955) argument that a concern for reducing welfare inequalities among persons must not enter social welfare judgements. In Section 3 an axiomatic derivation of Rawls' lexicographic maximim rule is presented; this relates closely to results established by Hammond (1975), d'Aspremont and Gevers (1975) and Strasnick (1975). In the last section the axioms used are examined and some alternative axioms are analysed with the aim of a discriminating evaluation of the Rawlsian approach to judgements on social welfare.Based on the text of a lecture delivered at the International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in London, Ontario, Canada, on August 29th, 1975. Thanks are due to Peter Hammond and Kevin Roberts for helpful comments and criticisms.     

On Ordinal Utility,Cardinal Utility and Random Utility

Though the Random Utility Model (RUM) was conceived entirely in terms of ordinal utility, the apparatus through which it is widely practised exhibits properties of cardinal utility. The adoption of cardinal utility as a working operation of ordinal is perfectly valid, provided interpretations drawn from that operation remain faithful to ordinal utility. The article considers whether the latter requirement holds true for several measurements commonly derived from RUM. In particular it is found that measurements of consumer surplus change may depart from ordinal utility, and exploit the cardinality inherent in the practical apparatus.      

人际资本与机会利益

人际资本的特点主要是人际资本表现为人与人之间的关系。它既不依附于独立的个人,也不存在于物质生产过程中,人际资本是无形的,人际资本具有公共物品的性质。机会利益具有时效性、不确定性。人际资本能够通过声誉机制来约束内部的获取分配性机会利益的行为,人际关系大大地提高了信息的利用率,增加获得机会利益的机会。     

NONPARAMETRIC STATISTICS IN MULTICRITERIA ANALYSIS

The paper deals with a method of hierarchization of alternatives in a multicriteria environment by means of statistical nonparametric procedures. For each criterion, alternatives are disposed on an ordinal scale. After that a procedure similar to ANOVA is activated on the data. The differences relating to the average ranks of each action are used to build the hierarchical algorithm. The concept of outranking, in a probabilistic meaning, is reached in this way. Thereafter, we arrive at the concept of dominance using pairwise comparisons. A case study is presented which implements the methodological suggestion.     

A game theoretic account of social justice

The role in ethics of game theory proper (as opposed to decision theory) is discussed via an elucidation of a new theory of justice. The new theory integrates into a coherent whole two fundamental distributive norms: To Each According to his Needs; and to Each According to his Contribution. The theory incorporates a new account of ethics in terms of impartial decision — an account which dispenses with the need for a Veil of Ignorance construct. Also, the new theory does not require the use of interpersonal comparisons of utility at an operational level, even though such comparisons arise at a conceptual level. The reason for this lies in its relationship to game theoretical structures which do not entail interpersonal comparisons. Finally, the theory makes possible a new interpretation of two cooperative game solutions: The Nash solution, and the Generalized Shapley Value.     

The Deep Side of Preference Theory

An individual is said to have a taste for a particular menu, i.e. a subset of available commodities, if he is indifferent between all commodity bundles that contain the same quantity for each commodity which actually is in the menu, whatever the rest of the bundle. Then, a taste is directly defined as a deep property of preferences. As a first result, it is shown that a complete and transitive preference relation over the commodity bundles is equivalent to regular tastes where regularity means that tastes can be derived from a pure qualitative relation between the different commodities. Besides, a preference family based on preference relations corresponding to each particular commodity is said to be rationalizable if there exists a metapreference over commodity bundles which consistently summarizes the preference family and then allows to decide. As a second result, it is shown that if a preference family is rationalizable, then the tastes are organized thanks to a reflexive and transitive qualitative relation between the different commodities.     

商品社会使用价值与市场价格规律论

现代经济理论的两大体系 ,都对价格的有关理论做出了说明。有一种说法 ,把马克思主义经济学的劳动价值论与当代西方主流经济学派的供求论综合起来 ,就应当可以得到较为完美的价格理论。但这是不可能的。解决问题的出路 ,只能是按马克思主义经济学的内在逻辑 ,深入研究商品的使用价值 ,通过商品价值和使用价值对商品价格做出完整的说明 ,同时破解在供求与价值决定上的相互循环论证 ,发展以劳动价值为基础的价格理论。商品的使用价值 ,具有自然使用价值和社会使用价值两重属性。商品的社会使用价值深刻地反映着商品交换的经济关系 ,由自然使用价值等一系列因素决定。商品社会使用价值 ,在量上最终表现为某一商品的社会需求量与生产供给量的比率 ,在不同的条件下具有不同的值。商品的市场价格 ,由商品价值或其转化形式与商品社会使用价值共同决定。社会使用价值比价值或其转化形式更复杂、更多样、更易变 ,是市场价格变化的主导因素。社会使用价值为 1的市场价格 ,即是市场均衡价格。所谓市场价格围绕商品价值或其转化形式上下波动 ,实质上应是围绕市场均衡价格上下波动。调节市场供求关系的根本因素 ,表面上看是商品价格 ,而实质上是市场供求的相互作用。     

Love and Personal Relationships: Navigating on the Border Between the Ideal and the Real

In the psychological literature, love is often seen as a construct inseparable from that of close, interpersonal relationships. As a result, it has been often assumed that the same motivational factors underlie both phenomena. This often leads researchers to propose that love does not exist in itself—that it is an emotion which stems solely from a need for attachment, fulfillment of reproductive aims, or for social exchange. The popular cultural imagination, however, perceives love as a unique, mysterious, altruistic, ever-lasting bond between two people—a vision of love which is at odds with its supposed psychological origins. We propose that an ideal of love and its enactment in our culture is a result of two intertwining factors. Within the last few centuries, interpersonal relationships and love have replaced religion as islands of existential comfort. Toward this end, lovers project illusory meaning on their partners. The laborious and turbulent process of withdrawing these projections can lead to what many thinkers think "love" is: bestowal of value on another, and consequent respect for, and care for that person, unmotivated by one's own needs, within the context of a real relationship.     

Justice,liberty, unanimity and the axioms of identity

Two new justice constraints on liberal rights and the Pareto rule are proposed and analysed. Each resolves both Sen and Gibbard paradoxes. The first, following Hammond, requires no axiom of identity. The second, following Sen and Suppes, resolves Sen Paradoxes for two rights, but requires the axiom of complete identity to resolve Gibbard paradoxes and Sen Paradoxes with three or more rights. This second constraint therefore turns social conflicts over rights into disagreements about interpersonal and intersituational comparisons. By itself it solves the majoritarian paradox and the all-but-one-person-is-decisive paradox.     

“人际和谐”内涵与特点新探

人际和谐是社会和谐的基础。从某种意义上来说,人际和谐具有普世价值和恒久价值,它是人类共同的期盼和追求。然而,现实生活中的一些现象严重扭曲和扰乱了人们对人际和谐的正确理解。从＂五个方面＂把握人际和谐的科学内涵,从＂三个辩证统一＂的维度认识人际和谐的特点,对实现真正的人际和谐是十分必要的。     

Bayesian decision theory,rule utilitarianism,and Arrow's impossibility theorem

The first part of this paper reexamines the logical foundations of Bayesian decision theory and argues that the Bayesian criterion of expected-utility maximization is the only decision criterion consistent with rationality. On the other hand, the Bayesian criterion, together with the Pareto optimality requirement, inescapably entails a utilitarian theory of morality. The next sections discuss the role both of cardinal utility and of cardinal interpersonal comparisons of utility in ethics. It is shown that the utilitarian welfare function satisfies all of Arrow's social choice postulates avoiding the celebrated impossibility theorem by making use of information which is unavailable in Arrow's original framework. Finally, rule utilitarianism is contrasted with act utilitarianism and judged to be preferable for the purposes of ethical theory.     

A Simple Tool for Qualitatively Testing,Quantitatively Measuring,and Normatively Justifying Savage's Subjective Expected Utility

This paper introduces a new preference condition that can be used to justify (or criticize) expected utility. The approach taken in this paper is an alternative to Savage's, and is accessible to readers without a mathematical background. It is based on a method for deriving comparisons of tradeoffs from ordinal preferences. Our condition simplifies previously-published tradeoff conditions, and at the same time provides more general and more powerful tools to specialists. The condition is more closely related to empirical methods for measuring utility than its predecessors. It provides a unifying tool for qualitatively testing, quantitatively measuring, and normatively justifying expected utility.     

Why ethical measures of inequality need interpersonal comparisons

An ethical measure of income inequality corresponds to a social ordering of income distributions. Without interpersonal comparisons, the only possible social orderings are dictatorial, so there can be no ethical inequality measure. Interpersonal comparisons allow a very much richer set of possible social orderings, and the construction of ethical measures of inequality.I have benefited especially from reading the published and unpublished work of Parks, of Sen, and of d'Aspremont and Gevers, and I claim little originality for the ideas expressed here.     

Moral hazard,monitoring costs,and optimal government intervention

When insurance firms can monitor with non-prohibitive costs the consumption of risk-influencing goods by an insured, they have incentives to tax-subsidize the insured's consumption of the goods. If the government cannot monitor at a lower cost than private insurers, intervention is neither needed nor desirable. Where the government does have a monitoring-cost advantage, it cannot achieve a constrained optimum by commodity tax-subsidies alone. It must also augment the level of insurance and, in some cases, prohibit private tax-subsidies by insurers. Such “invasive” intervention can be avoided if the government regulates the consumption of the risk-influencing goods.     

A taxonomy of all ordinal 2 × 2 games

The 2 × 2 game is the simplest and most commonly employed representation of strategic conflict. The 78 strict ordinal 2 × 2 games have been used as conflict models extensively, and have been related in several different taxonomies. However, interest has recently focussed on the full set of 726 general ordinal games, in which one or both players may have equal preferences for two or more outcomes. This paper describes the development of a practical taxonomy of all 726 ordinal 2 × 2 games. The taxonomy provides for rapid identification of particular games, gives a convenient ordering, is as consistent as possible with previous work, and yet is not tied to any specific solution concepts. As well, definitions of several significant game properties are developed or extended to general ordinal games and applied in conjunction with the taxonomy.     

Renewed Conception of Harmonious Society,Governance, and Citizenship – Evidence from the Study of Chinese Perceptions in Hong Kong

This paper aims at constructing a modern theoretical conception of a harmonious society and testing it in relation to governance and citizenship rights, based on an empirical study of Chinese people’s perceptions in Hong Kong. It is proposed that a harmonious society can be defined as “a society in which the component parts are integrative and cooperative; even if there is conflict, it can be resolved within the established mechanisms and does not interrupt the orderly functioning of society.” This study investigates the social, economic, and political aspects and their related institutions in the renewed conception of harmonious society. Overall, less than two‐fifths of the respondents felt that Hong Kong was a harmonious society. The strength of governance in Hong Kong is its sound and trustworthy institutions; the weaker elements are social and interpersonal relations. This finding is in contrast to the traditional notion, which regards social harmony as harmonious social and interpersonal relationships. It is clear that the greatest challenge for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government is the need to rebalance the interests of big business and those of labor and the lower class in order to enhance the perception of a harmonious society among its citizens.     

General equilibrium with information sales

Consider a general equilibrium model in which information is an indivisible differentiated commodity for which satiation occurs at one unit. Suppose that uncountably many types of information are possible which can be costlessly combined by agents who desire information only because it helps them to maximize state dependent utilities under uncertainty. Similarity of information is expressed by a metric which reflects substitution possibilities among different information structures. Such a large pure exchange economy in which prices for (differentiated) information structures and (finitely many) ordinary commodities are determined simultaneously is consistent - equilibrium distributions exist.     

Compensation for What? An Analysis of Insurance Strategies for Repairable Assets

We define a repairable asset as an irreplaceable commodity whose quality is at risk, but can be partly restored at a cost. Examples are houses, automobiles and, especially, health, for which standard monetary approaches are oversimplified. To optimize the value of insurance, the insurer and the insured have to agree upon repair strategies (when to fix the asset and how much) and compensation rules (how much money to receive for other goods). We clarify the role of the consumer's preferences in the properties of the contract, and we highlight the relationship between repair strategies and the super- or submodular structure of the repair technology.