What is the relationship between degrees of belief and (all-or-nothing) beliefs? Can the latter be expressed as a function of the former, without running into paradoxes? We reassess this “belief-binarization” problem from the perspective of judgmentaggregation theory. Although some...

Many procedures have been suggested for the venerable problem of dividing a set of indivisible items between two players. We propose a new algorithm (AL), related to one proposed by Brams and Taylor (BT), which requires only that the players strictly rank items from best to worst. Unlike BT, in...

Democracy resolves conflicts in difficult games like Prisoners’ Dilemma and Chicken by stabilizing their cooperative outcomes. It does so by transforming these games into games in which voters are presented with a choice between a cooperative outcome and a Pareto-inferior noncooperative...

Is there a division among n players of a cake using n-1 parallel vertical cuts, or of a pie using n radial cuts, that is envy-free (each player thinks he or she receives a largest piece and so does not envy another player) and undominated (there is no other allocation as good for all players and...

This paper analyses the implications of classical liberal and libertarian approaches for distributive justice in the context of social welfare orderings. An axiom capturing a liberal non-interfering view of society, named the Weak Harm Principle, is studied, whose roots can be traced back to...

We analyze a simple sequential algorithm (SA) for allocating indivisible items that are strictly ranked by n ≥ 2 players. It yields at least one Pareto-optimal allocation which, when n = 2, is envy-free unless no envy-free allocation exists. However, an SA allocation may not be maximin or...

Aristotle’s economics of exchange: (a) Ideally, reciprocal justice in bilateral bargaining to minimize expenditure given utility levels results in Pareto-efficient, envy-free, equitable outcomes. (b) Practically, bargaining under the threat or actual recontracting may act as a surrogate of...

We show that the problem of evaluating infinite sequences (or streams) of utilities by a unique utility (or social welfare function) can be stated in terms of fuzzy subsets of the set of infinite utility sequences. For each stream, its evaluation can be viewed as its degree of membership to the...

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically investigate the potential benefits that arise from a cooperative selling a government subsidized area-yield contract (i.e., the Group Risk Plan). The indeminities in area-yield contracts are triggered by a geographically determined yield (e.g., a...

Subjective beliefs and behavior regarding the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer were surveyed among attendees of the 2006 meeting of the American Economic Association. Logical inconsistency was measured in percentage deviations from a restriction imposed by Bayes’ Rule...