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Egalitarian Rule
In social choice and operations research, the egalitarian rule (also called the max-min rule or the Rawlsian rule) is a rule saying that, among all possible alternatives, society should pick the alternative which maximizes the ''minimum utility'' of all individuals in society. It is a formal mathematical representation of the egalitarian philosophy. It also corresponds to John Rawls' principle of maximizing the welfare of the worst-off individual. Definition Let X be a set of possible `states of the world' or `alternatives'. Society wishes to choose a single state from X. For example, in a single-winner election, X may represent the set of candidates; in a resource allocation setting, X may represent all possible allocations. Let I be a finite set, representing a collection of individuals. For each i \in I, let u_i:X\longrightarrow\mathbb be a ''utility function'', describing the amount of happiness an individual ''i'' derives from each possible state. A '' social choice rule'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Choice Theory
Social choice theory or social choice is a theoretical framework for analysis of combining individual opinions, preferences, interests, or welfares to reach a ''collective decision'' or ''social welfare'' in some sense.Amartya Sen (2008). "Social Choice,". ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'', 2nd EditionAbstract & TOC./ref> Whereas choice theory is concerned with individuals making choices based on their preferences, social choice theory is concerned with how to translate the preferences of individuals into the preferences of a group. A non-theoretical example of a collective decision is enacting a law or set of laws under a constitution. Another example is voting, where individual preferences over candidates are collected to elect a person that best represents the group's preferences. Social choice blends elements of welfare economics and public choice theory. It is methodologically individualistic, in that it aggregates preferences and behaviors of individual member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pigou–Dalton Principle
The Pigou–Dalton principle (PDP) is a principle in welfare economics, particularly in cardinal welfarism. Named after Arthur Cecil Pigou and Hugh Dalton, it is a condition on social welfare functions. It says that, all other things being equal, a social welfare function should prefer allocations that are more equitable. In other words, a transfer of some defined variable (for example utility or income) from the rich to the poor is desirable, as long as it does not bring the rich to a poorer situation than the poor. Formally, let u=(u_1,u_2,\dots,u_n) and u'=(u'_1,u'_2,\dots,u'_n) be two utility profiles. Suppose that at the first profile: :u_1 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max-min Fair Scheduling
In communication networks, multiplexing and the division of scarce resources, max-min fairness is said to be achieved by an allocation if and only if the allocation is feasible and an attempt to increase the allocation of any participant necessarily results in the decrease in the allocation of some other participant with an equal or smaller allocation. In best-effort statistical multiplexing, a first-come first-served (FCFS) scheduling policy is often used. The advantage with max-min fairness over FCFS is that it results in traffic shaping, meaning that an ill-behaved flow, consisting of large data packets or bursts of many packets, will only punish itself and not other flows. Network congestion is consequently to some extent avoided. Fair queuing is an example of a max-min fair packet scheduling algorithm for statistical multiplexing and best-effort networks, since it gives scheduling priority to users that have achieved lowest data rate since they became active. In case of equ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proportional-fair Rule
In operations research and social choice, the proportional-fair (PF) rule is a rule saying that, among all possible alternatives, one should pick an alternative that cannot be improved, where "improvement" is measured by the sum of relative improvements possible for each individual agent. It aims to provide a compromise between the utilitarian rule - which emphasizes overall system efficiency, and the egalitarian rule - which emphasizes individual fairness. The rule was first presented in the context of rate control in communication networks. However, it is a general social choice rule and can also be used, for example, in resource allocation. Definition Let X be a set of possible `states of the world' or `alternatives'. Society wishes to choose a single state from X. For example, in a single-winner election, X may represent the set of candidates; in a resource allocation setting, X may represent all possible allocations of the resource. Let I be a finite set, representing a co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utilitarian Social Choice Rule
In social choice and operations research, the utilitarian rule (also called the max-sum rule) is a rule saying that, among all possible alternatives, society should pick the alternative which maximizes the ''sum of the utilities'' of all individuals in society. It is a formal mathematical representation of the utilitarian philosophy. Definition Let X be a set of possible `states of the world' or `alternatives'. Society wishes to choose a single state from X. For example, in a single-winner election, X may represent the set of candidates; in a resource allocation setting, X may represent all possible allocations of the resource. Let I be a finite set, representing a collection of individuals. For each i \in I, let u_i:X\longrightarrow\mathbb be a ''utility function'', describing the amount of happiness an individual ''i'' derives from each possible state. A '' social choice rule'' is a mechanism which uses the data (u_i)_ to select some element(s) from X which are `best' for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egalitarian Cake-cutting
Egalitarian cake-cutting is a kind of fair cake-cutting in which the fairness criterion is the egalitarian rule. The ''cake'' represents a continuous resource (such as land or time), that has to be allocated among people with different valuations over parts of the resource. The goal in egalitarian cake-cutting is to maximize the smallest value of an agent; subject to this, maximize the next-smallest value; and so on. It is also called leximin cake-cutting, since the optimization is done using the leximin order on the vectors of utilities. The concept of egalitarian cake-cutting was first described by Dubins and Spanier, who called it "optimal partition". Existence Leximin-optimal allocations exist whenever the set of allocations is a compact space. This is always the case when allocating discrete objects, and easy to prove when allocating a finite number of continuous homogeneous resources. Dubins and Spanier proved that, with a continuous ''heterogeneous'' resource (" cake") ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fair Subset Sum Problem
The multiple subset sum problem is an optimization problem in computer science and operations research. It is a generalization of the subset sum problem. The input to the problem is a multiset S of ''n'' integers and a positive integer ''m'' representing the number of subsets. The goal is to construct, from the input integers, some ''m'' subsets. The problem has several variants: * ''Max-sum MSSP'': for each subset ''j'' in 1,...,''m'', there is a capacity ''Cj''. The goal is to make the ''sum'' of all subsets as large as possible, such that the sum in each subset j is at most ''Cj''. * ''Max-min MSSP'' (also called ''bottleneck MSSP'' or ''BMSSP''): again each subset has a capacity, but now the goal is to make the ''smallest'' subset sum as large as possible. * ''Fair SSP'': the subsets have no fixed capacities, but each subset belongs to a different person. The utility of each person is the sum of items in his/her subsets. The goal is to construct subsets that satisfy a given crite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fair Division Of A Single Homogeneous Resource
Fair division of a single homogeneous resource is one of the simplest settings in fair division problems. There is a single resource that should be divided between several people. The challenge is that each person derives a different utility from each amount of the resource. Hence, there are several conflicting principles for deciding how the resource should be divided. A primary conflict is between efficiency and equality. Efficiency is represented by the ''utilitarian'' rule, which maximizes the sum of utilities; equality is represented by the ''egalitarian'' rule, which maximizes the minimum utility. Setting In a certain society, there are: * t units of some divisible resource. * n agents with different "utilities". * The utility of agent i is represented by a function u_i; when agent i receives y_i units of resource, he derives from it a utility of u_i(y_i). This setting can have various interpretations. For example: * The resource is wood, the agents are builders, and the ut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fair Division
Fair division is the problem in game theory of dividing a set of resources among several people who have an entitlement to them so that each person receives their due share. That problem arises in various real-world settings such as division of inheritance, partnership dissolutions, divorce settlements, electronic frequency allocation, airport traffic management, and exploitation of Earth observation satellites. It is an active research area in mathematics, economics (especially social choice theory), dispute resolution, etc. The central tenet of fair division is that such a division should be performed by the players themselves, maybe using a mediator but certainly not an arbiter as only the players really know how they value the goods. The archetypal fair division algorithm is divide and choose. It demonstrates that two agents with different tastes can divide a cake such that each of them believes that he got the best piece. The research in fair division can be seen as an exten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pareto Efficiency
Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no action or allocation is available that makes one individual better off without making another worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian civil engineer and economist, who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. The following three concepts are closely related: * Given an initial situation, a Pareto improvement is a new situation where some agents will gain, and no agents will lose. * A situation is called Pareto-dominated if there exists a possible Pareto improvement. * A situation is called Pareto-optimal or Pareto-efficient if no change could lead to improved satisfaction for some agent without some other agent losing or, equivalently, if there is no scope for further Pareto improvement. The Pareto front (also called Pareto frontier or Pareto set) is the set of all Pareto-efficient situations. Pareto originally used the word "optimal" for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operations Research
Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decision-making. It is considered to be a subfield of mathematical sciences. The term management science is occasionally used as a synonym. Employing techniques from other mathematical sciences, such as modeling, statistics, and optimization, operations research arrives at optimal or near-optimal solutions to decision-making problems. Because of its emphasis on practical applications, operations research has overlap with many other disciplines, notably industrial engineering. Operations research is often concerned with determining the extreme values of some real-world objective: the maximum (of profit, performance, or yield) or minimum (of loss, risk, or cost). Originating in military efforts before World War II, its techniques have grown to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amartya Sen
Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, decision theory, development economics, public health, and measures of well-being of countries. He is currently a Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He formerly served as Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and India's Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. The German Publishers and Booksellers Association awarded him the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his pioneering scholarship addressing issues of global justice and combating social inequality in education and healthcare. Early life and educ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
