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Decision making beyond arrow's “impossibility theorem,” with the analysis of effects of collusion and mutual attraction
Author(s) -
Nguyen Hung T.,
Kosheleva Olga,
Kreinovich Vladik
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
international journal of intelligent systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.291
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1098-111X
pISSN - 0884-8173
DOI - 10.1002/int.20324
Subject(s) - arrow's impossibility theorem , arrow , mathematical economics , social choice theory , attraction , nash equilibrium , computer science , group decision making , impossibility , collusion , game theory , mathematics , economics , microeconomics , social psychology , psychology , linguistics , philosophy , political science , law , programming language
In 1951, K.J. Arrow proved that, under certain assumptions, it is impossible to have group decision‐making rules that satisfy reasonable conditions like symmetry. This Impossibility Theorem is often cited as a proof that reasonable group decision‐making is impossible. We start our article by remarking that Arrow's result covers only those situations when the only information we have about individual preferences is their binary preferences between the alternatives. If we follow the main ideas of modern decision making and game theory and also collect information about the preferences between lotteries (i.e., collect the utility values of different alternatives), then reasonable decision‐making rules are possible, e.g., Nash's rule in which we select an alternative for which the product of utilities is the largest possible. We also deal with two related issues: how we can detect individual preferences if all we have is preferences of a subgroup and how we take into account the mutual attraction between participants. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.