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Related papers: Coordinate-free utility theory

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We initiate a novel direction in randomized social choice by proposing a new definition of agent utility for randomized outcomes. Each agent has a preference over all outcomes and a {\em quantile} parameter. Given a {\em lottery} over the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Ioannis Caragiannis , Fabian Frank , Sanjukta Roy

An agent's preferences depend on an ordered parameter or type. We characterize the set of utility functions with single-crossing differences (SCD) in convex environments. These include preferences over lotteries, both in expected utility…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-06-06 Navin Kartik , SangMok Lee , Daniel Rappoport

Consider the object allocation (one-sided matching) model of Shapley and Scarf (1974). When final allocations are observed but agents' preferences are unknown, when might the allocation be in the core? This is a one-sided analogue of the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-08-08 Andrew Tai

LLMs are increasingly used to make or support high-stakes decisions under uncertainty, where alignment depends not only on factual accuracy but on how models weigh tradeoffs between different outcomes. We present an empirical pipeline for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Khurram Yamin , Jingjing Tang , Eric Horvitz , Bryan Wilder

This paper studies self-sustained dynamic multiagent systems (MAS) for decentralized resource allocation operating at a competitive equilibrium over a finite horizon. The utility of resource consumption, along with the income from resource…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-09-13 Zeinab Salehi , Yijun Chen , Ian R. Petersen , Elizabeth L. Ratnam , Guodong Shi

Harsanyi (1955) showed that the only way to aggregate individual preferences into a social preference which satisfies certain desirable properties is ``utilitarianism'', whereby the social utility function is a weighted average of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-11-05 Federico Echenique , Quitzé Valenzuela-Stookey

Euclidean preferences are a widely studied preference model, in which decision makers and alternatives are embedded in d-dimensional Euclidean space. Decision makers prefer those alternatives closer to them. This model, also known as…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-02-29 Dominik Peters

Functions with uniform level sets can represent orders, preference relations or other binary relations and thus turn out to be a tool for scalarization that can be used, e.g., in multicriteria optimization, decision theory, mathematical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-08-11 Petra Weidner

In the Seat Arrangement problem the goal is to allocate agents to vertices in a graph such that the resulting arrangement is optimal or fair in some way. Examples include an arrangement that maximises utility or one where no agent envies…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-27 José Rodríguez

Expected Utility: Algebraic Expected Utility In this paper, we provide two axiomatizations of algebraic expected utility, which is a particular generalized expected utility, in a von Neumann-Morgenstern setting, i.e. uncertainty…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-02 Paul Weng

I study the problem of allocating objects among agents without using money. Agents can receive several objects and have dichotomous preferences, meaning that they either consider objects to be acceptable or not. In this setup, the…

Economics · Quantitative Finance 2018-07-09 Josue Ortega

Social decision schemes (SDSs) map the voters' preferences over multiple alternatives to a probability distribution over these alternatives. In a seminal result, Gibbard (1977) has characterized the set of SDSs that are strategyproof with…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-25 Patrick Lederer

This paper considers the scenario in which there are multiple institutions, each with a limited capacity for candidates, and candidates, each with preferences over the institutions. A central entity evaluates the utility of each candidate…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-09-10 L. Elisa Celis , Amit Kumar , Nisheeth K. Vishnoi , Andrew Xu

We introduce a new class of graphical representations, expected utility networks (EUNs), and discuss some of its properties and potential applications to artificial intelligence and economic theory. In EUNs not only probabilities, but also…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-18 Pierfrancesco La Mura , Yoav Shoham

Tackling the problem of ordinal preference revelation and reasoning, we propose a novel methodology for generating an ordinal utility function from a set of qualitative preference statements. To the best of our knowledge, our proposal…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-09 Carmel Domshlak , Thorsten Joachims

The superselection sectors of two classes of scalar bilocal quantum fields in D>=4 dimensions are explicitly determined by working out the constraints imposed by unitarity. The resulting classification in terms of the dual of the respective…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2008-11-26 Bojko Bakalov , Nikolay Nikolov , Karl-Henning Rehren , Ivan Todorov

A central problem in multiagent systems is the fair assignment of objects to agents. In this paper, we initiate the analysis of classic majoritarian social choice functions in assignment. Exploiting the special structure of the assignment…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-20 Felix Brandt , Haoyuan Chen , Chris Dong , Patrick Lederer , Alexander Schlenga

We pursue an inverse approach to utility theory and consumption & investment problems. Instead of specifying an agent's utility function and deriving her actions, we assume we observe her actions (i.e. her consumption and investment…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2015-03-17 Alexander M. G. Cox , David Hobson , Jan Obloj

We propose a robust method of discrete choice analysis when agents' choice sets are unobserved. Our core model assumes nothing about agents' choice sets apart from their minimum size. Importantly, it leaves unrestricted the dependence,…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-02-11 Levon Barseghyan , Maura Coughlin , Francesca Molinari , Joshua C. Teitelbaum

We obtain variants of the classical von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility theorem, with and without the completeness axiom, in which the derived Bernoulli utility functions are Lipschitz. The prize space in these results is an arbitrary…

Functional Analysis · Mathematics 2021-04-23 Efe A. Ok , Nik Weaver