When is it (im)possible to respect all individuals' preferences under uncertainty?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Nakamura, Kensei
• 署名单位: Hitotsubashi University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2026.03.001
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: UTILITARIAN AGGREGATION; SOCIAL AGGREGATION; cardinal welfare; beliefs; Impossibility; THEOREM; ETHICS; CHOICE

摘要

When aggregating Subjective Expected Utility preferences, the Pareto principle leads to an impossibility result unless the individuals have a common belief. This paper examines the source of this impossibility in more detail by considering the aggregation of a general class of incomplete preferences that can represent gradual ambiguity perceptions. Our result shows that the planner cannot avoid ignoring some individuals unless there is a probability distribution that all individuals agree is most plausible. This means that even if individuals have similar ambiguity perceptions, the impossibility persists as long as some individual's most plausible belief differs even slightly from that of others.