Representing Utility Functions via Weighted Goals

We analyze the expressivity, succinctness, and complexity of a family of languages based on weighted propositional formulas for the representation of utility functions. The central idea underlying this form of preference modeling is to associate numerical weights with goals specified in terms of propositional formulas, and to compute the utility value of an alternative as the sum of the weights of the goals it satisfies. We define a large number of representation languages based on this idea, each characterized by a set of restrictions on the syntax of formulas and the range of weights. Our aims are threefold. First, for each language we try to identify the class of utility functions it can express. Second, when different languages can express the same class of utility functions, one may allow for a more succinct representation than another. Therefore, we analyze the relative succinctness of languages. Third, for each language we study the computational complexity of the problem of finding the most preferred alternative given a utility function expressed in that language (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Social choice theory without Pareto: The pivotal voter approach

This paper extends the pivotal voter approach pioneered by Barberá [Barberá, S., 1980. Pivotal voters: A new proof of Arrow’s Theorem. Economics Letters 6, 13–6; Barberá, S., 1983. Strategy-proofness and pivotal voters: A direct proof of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem. International Economic Review 24, 413–7] to all social welfare functions satisfying independence of irrelevant alternatives. Arrow’s Theorem, Wilson’s Theorem, and the Muller–Satterthwaite Theorem are all immediate corollaries of the main result. It is further shown that a vanishingly small fraction of pairs of alternatives can be affected in the group preference ordering by multiple individuals, which generalizes each of the above theorems.     

普通选择函数的若干合理性条件的模糊化研究

以普通选择函数的有关结论为基础,利用模糊逻辑联结运算模糊化了Arrow的五个合理性条件,讨论了模糊化后的这些合理性条件之间的关系,研究了文献中给出的一个开问题,并对模糊情形下不成立的情况提供反例予以说明,从而推广了普通选择函数的相关结论。