Social Choice Theory and the Informational Basis Approach

Roberts, Kenneth M.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511800511.007

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Level comparability allows saying whether one person’s HRQL is better, or worse, than another’s. Unit comparability allows saying whether a change in one person’s HRQL is greater or less than a change in another’s (e.g., one person improves more with a treatment) [18]. …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Approach to Reconciling Competing Ethical Principles in Aggregating Heterogeneous Health Preferences

et al. 2017

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Background Health-related quality of life (HRQL) scores are used extensively to quantify the effectiveness of medical interventions. Societal preference-based HRQL scores aim to produce societal valuations of health by aggregating valuations from individuals in the general population, where each aggregation procedure embodies different ethical principles, as explained in social choice theory. Methods Using the Health Utilities Index as an exemplar, we evaluate societal preference-based HRQL measures in the social choice theory framework. Results We find that current preference aggregation procedures are typically justified in terms of social choice theory. However, by convention, they use only one of many possible aggregation procedures (the mean). Central to the choice of aggregation procedure is how to treat preference heterogeneity, which can affect analyses that rely on HRQL scores, such as cost-effectiveness analyses. We propose an analytical-deliberative framework for choosing one (or a set of) aggregation procedure(s) in a socially credible way, which we believe to be analytically sound and empirically tractable, but leave open the institutional mechanism needed to implement it. Conclusions Socially acceptable decisions about aggregating heterogeneous preferences require eliciting stakeholders’ preferences among the set of analytically sound procedures, representing different ethical principles. We describe a framework for eliciting such preferences for the creation of HRQL scores, informed by social choice theory and behavioral decision research.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Approach to Reconciling Competing Ethical Principles in Aggregating Heterogeneous Health Preferences

et al. 2017

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“…To construct a societal preference interval ( L , U ), representing society's uncertainty about the value of avoiding a blackout (where in this case “society” is everyone served by the feeder), we must aggregate L i and U i in some way. If L i and U i are measured on an interval scale and individuals are interpersonally comparable so that changes in lower (upper) bounds are equivalent from person to person, the measures satisfy cardinal full comparability (Roberts, ). Because we assume cardinal utilities with full interpersonal comparability, individuals’ preferences can be combined to make social decisions without contradicting Arrow's impossibility theorem, which applies only when individual preferences are ordinal and noncomparable (Arrow, ; Sen, ).…”

Section: Incorporating Preference Uncertainty Into Policy Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, cardinal full comparability also admits other aggregation rules. Two important ones that yield a transitive social welfare function and provide interesting bounds on what society might care about are the minimum and maximum (Roberts, ; Sen, ). There are arguments for and against each one.…”

Section: Incorporating Preference Uncertainty Into Policy Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Illustration of a Method to Incorporate Preference Uncertainty in Benefit–Cost Analysis

Davis

Morgan

2019

Risk Analysis

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Benefit–cost analysis is widely used to evaluate alternative courses of action that are designed to achieve policy objectives. Although many analyses take uncertainty into account, they typically only consider uncertainty about cost estimates and physical states of the world, whereas uncertainty about individual preferences, thus the benefit of policy intervention, is ignored. Here, we propose a strategy to integrate individual uncertainty about preferences into benefit–cost analysis using societal preference intervals, which are ranges of values over which it is unclear whether society as a whole should accept or reject an option. To illustrate the method, we use preferences for implementing a smart grid technology to sustain critical electricity demand during a 24‐hour regional power blackout on a hot summer weekend. Preferences were elicited from a convenience sample of residents in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. This illustrative example shows that uncertainty in individual preferences, when aggregated to form societal preference intervals, can substantially change society's decision. We conclude with a discussion of where preference uncertainty comes from, how it might be reduced, and why incorporating unresolved preference uncertainty into benefit–cost analyses can be important.

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“…Social choice theory is concerned with the principles underlying group choice and group preference when individuals have different preferences over the alternatives [4]. It proposes principles of preference aggregation in the sense that individual preference is to be reflected equitably in group preference, insofar as possible.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New developments in modeling multilateral negotiations

Sheikhmohammady

Hipel

Kilgour

2007

2007 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics

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The general objective of this research is developing methodologies to predict stable agreements in multilateral negotiations and study their properties. To model and analyze negotiations, a wide range of integrative or cooperative approaches can be used to identify appropriate tradeoffs for the negotiators. The negotiation problems considered here are distinctive, however, because the set of possible agreements is discrete, and specified in advance. Each decision maker has two concerns: first, achieving an alternative that is as preferable as possible; second, building support for this alternative among the other decision makers. New definitions and methodologies are proposed in this paper to model and analyze multilateral negotiations within a context of discrete choices.Majid Sheikhmohammady is with the

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Social Choice Theory and the Informational Basis Approach

Cited by 9 publications

References 21 publications

An Approach to Reconciling Competing Ethical Principles in Aggregating Heterogeneous Health Preferences

An Approach to Reconciling Competing Ethical Principles in Aggregating Heterogeneous Health Preferences

Illustration of a Method to Incorporate Preference Uncertainty in Benefit–Cost Analysis

New developments in modeling multilateral negotiations

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