Consistent updating of social welfare functions
Consistent updating of social welfare functions
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社会福利函数持续更新
DOI：
10.1007/s00355-015-0929-9
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发表时间：
2016
影响因子：
0.9
通讯作者：
Takashi Hayashi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Takashi Hayashi
“理性”决策的核心原则之一是，代理人应该具有前瞻性，而不是受过去的束缚。我们认为，这对于集体决策来说并不是一个有吸引力的原则，过去的原则具有必要和实质性的作用。我们考虑了一种明确的社会福利排序的动态过程，并提出了一种动态约束，即使在拒绝前瞻性原则之后，该约束也是可以接受的。它是两个论断的结合：（i）过程必须是动态一致的，这意味着事前的福利判断必须得到事后的福利判断的尊重，并且它们之间不应该有矛盾； (ii) 福利判断的结构在持续更新下应该是循环的，即如果一个假设被事前福利判断所满足，那么它也被任何遵循该事前判断的事后福利判断所满足。基于这个观点，我们提出了一组一致更新下循环的社会福利排序公理，并刻画了一组更新下封闭的社会福利函数。通过这样一类社会福利函数，我们描述了过去和已知未发生的事情在更新阶段可以发挥的作用。
It is one of the central doctrines for ‘rational’ decision making that an agent should be forward-looking and not be bound by bygones. We argue that this is not an appealing principle for collective decision making, and that bygones have necessary and substantive roles. We consider an explicitly dynamic process of social welfare orderings, and propose a dynamic constraint which is acceptable even after rejecting the principle that one should be forward-looking. It is a conjunction of two assertions: (i) the process must be dynamically consistent, which means an ex ante welfare judgment must be respected by the ex post ones and there should be no contradiction between them; (ii) the structure of a welfare judgment should be recurrent under consistent updating, in the sense that if a postulate is satisfied by an ex ante welfare judgment, then it is also satisfied by any of the ex post ones that follow this ex ante judgment. Based on this standpoint, we present a set of axioms for social welfare orderings which are recurrent under consistent updating, and characterize a set of social welfare functions which are closed under updating. With such a class of social welfare functions, we characterize the roles that can be played in the updating stage by the past and things known not to have occurred.