Open Access
Ranking sets additively in decisional contexts: an axiomatic characterization
(2006) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Rodríguez Alcantud, José Carlos; Economía; Ekonomia
Ranking finite subsets of a given set X of elements is the formal object of analysis in this paper. This problem has found a wide range of economic interpretations in the literature. The focus of the paper is on the family of rankings that are additively representable. Existing characterizations are too complex and hard to grasp in decisional contexts. Furthermore, Fishburn [13] showed that the number of sufficient and necessary conditions that are needed to characterize such a family has no upper bound as the cardinality of X increases. In turn, this paper proposes a way to overcome these difficulties and allows for the characterization of a meaningful (sub)family of additively representable rankings of sets by means of a few simple axioms. Pattanaik and Xu’s [21] characterization of the cardinality based rule will be derived from our main result, and other new rules that stem from our general proposal are discussed and characterized in even simpler terms. In particular, we analyze restricted-cardinality based rules, where the set of “focal” elements is not given ex-ante; but brought out by the axioms.
Open Access
Attitudes toward choice with incomplete preferences: an experimental study
(Elsevier, 2022) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Bourgeois-Gironde, Sacha; Hualde Vidaurre, Mikel; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Gobierno de Navarra / Nafarroako Gobernua; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa, PJUPNA19-2022
We present an experiment to test different individual attitudes toward choice, such as preference for flexibility, choice aversion, betweenness and choice neutrality. Unlike other related experimental papers, we want to analyze whether different choice attitudes can coexist for the same subject, depending on the characteristics of the choice set she is facing. In particular, our main hypothesis is that the presence of incomparability among the alternatives in the choice set, and the time at which such incomparability is solved, affect crucially the kind of attitude towards choice that the subject will exhibit. We find that, indeed, choice attitudes are not homogeneous across choice sets, yet they are conditional on the preferences over the alternatives. We also find some evidence supporting that subjects tend to value heuristically sets as a whole.
Open Access
On the equivalence of the two existing extensions of the leximax criterion to the infinite case
(2006) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Ballester Oyarzun, Miguel Ángel; Besada, M.; Miguel Velasco, Juan Ramón de; Nieto Vázquez, Jorge; Vázquez, C.; Economía; Ekonomia
Using a common framework, we consider the two existing extensions of the leximax criterion to infinite environments (Arlegi et al. (2005) and Ballester and De Miguel (2003), and show that, though the respective definitions of the rules and their axiomatic characterizations appear to differ considerably, they actually propose the same extension of the leximax criterion to the infinite case.
Open Access
On freedom of choice, ambiguity, and the preference for easy choices
(2006) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Dimitrov, Dinko; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper is devoted to the study of opportunity set comparisons when the characteristics of the options within the sets in question may be ambiguous. We assume that agents display a preference for freedom of choice, but also aversion to the presence of ambiguous options. We propose a suitable environment for approaching this problem, and provide axiomatic characterizations of several rules for ranking sets in such a context.
Open Access
On the aversion to incomplete preferences
(Springer, 2021) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Bourgeois-Gironde, Sacha; Hualde Vidaurre, Mikel; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
We propose an axiomatization of aversion to incomplete preferences. Some prevailing models of incomplete preferences rely on the hypothesis that incompleteness is temporary and that by keeping their opportunity set open individuals reveal a preference for flexibility. We consider that the maintenance of incomplete preference is also aversive. Our model allows us to show how incompleteness induces an aversive attitude in two different ways: intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic aversion holds when one instance of incomplete preference in the set suffices to decrease its utility. Instrumental aversion holds only insofar dominating options are affected by incompleteness. Given two partially overlapping sets of axioms on the binary relation over sets we formalize their consistency with the two types of aversion to incompleteness. Finally, we relate our model to the classical Sen's distinction between tentative and assertive incompleteness. The spelling out of this distinction in the terms of our approach uncovers to what extent aversion to incompleteness may be compatible with a preference for flexibility.
Open Access
An axiomatic analysis of ranking sets under simple categorization
(Springer, 2012) Alcantud, José Carlos R.; Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper contributes to the axiomatization of additive rules for ranking sets of objects under the psychological principle of categorization. Firstly we proceed with the case where the elements in the sets are categorized into at most three groups, namely good (with value 1), neutral (with value 0), and bad (with value−1). Secondly, we solve the case where there are only good and neutral elements. In both instances the evaluation of the sets is purely additive. Lastly, we show that dropping one of the axioms in our general characterization produces an axiomatization of the more general class of evaluations where good and bad elements are weighted differently. Areas of research in Economics such as committee selection problems, hedonic games and matching are among the ranking sets models where our results could potentially be applied.
Open Access
Equality of opportunities: cardinality-based criteria
(1998) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Nieto Vázquez, Jorge; Economía; Ekonomia
In this paper we study possible rankings of opportunity profiles. An opportunity profile is a list of sets of alternative opportunities, one set for each agent in the society. We compare such opportunity profiles on the basis of the notion of “equality of opportunities”. Our main results show the necessary and sufficient conditions for this comparison to be made using exclusively the information provided by two cardinal measures: the number of common alternatives for all sets in a given profile and/or the difference between the number of alternatives of individual sets. We also show that, under given circumstances, the only way to solve conflicts between these two numbers is to combine them in a lexicographic procedure.
Open Access
Participation in and provision of public goods: does granularity matter?
(Springer, 2020) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Benito Ostolaza, Juan Miguel; Osés Eraso, Nuria; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
We use public goods games to experimentally investigate the effect of granularity (i.e., the degree of divisibility of the space of feasible contribution options) on participation (whether individuals contribute or not to the public good) and public goods provision (total contribution to the public good). Our results show that granularity has a significant effect on participation, mainly when coarser granularity eliminates the possibility of small contributions. However, this change in participation does not lead to a significant change in the total provision of the public good. These results are aligned with other experimental field results obtained in the context of donations and fundraising.
Open Access
Uncertainty with ordinal likelihood information
(Springer-Verlag, 2013) Alcalde Unzu, Jorge; Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Ballester Oyarzun, Miguel Ángel; Economía; Ekonomia
We present a model that is closely related to the so-called models of choice under complete uncertainty, in which the agent has no information about the probability of the outcomes. There are two approaches within the said models: the state space-based approach, which takes into account the possible states of nature and the correspondence between states and outcomes; and the set-based approach, which ignores such information, and solves certain difficulties arising from the state space-based approach. Kelsey (Int Econ Rev 34:297–308, 1993) incorporates into a state space-based framework the assumption that the agent has ordinal information about the likelihood of the states. This paper incorporates this same assumption into a set-based framework, thus filling a theoretical gap in the literature. Compared to the set-based models of choice under complete uncertainty we introduce the information about the ordinal likelihood of the outcomes while, compared to Kelsey’s approach, we incorporate the advantages of describing uncertainty environments from the set-based perspective. We present an axiomatic study that includes adaptations of some of the axioms found in the related literature and we characterize some rules featuring different combinations of information about the ordinal likelihood of the outcomes and information about their desirability.
Open Access
A theory of choice under internal conflict
(2012) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Teschl, Miriam; Economía; Ekonomia
In this paper we discuss, inspired by some psychological literature, that choices are the outcome of the interplay of different, potentially conflicting motivations. We propose an axiomatic approach with two motivations, which we assume to be single-peaked over a certain given dimension. We first consider the case in which motivations are given and stable, and then introduce the possibility for motivations to change. We show first that in the no-motivation change case, certain choice behaviours that appear to be inconsistent from the standard rational choice point of view may be explained in our framework as the outcome of conflicting motivations. Afterwards, in the case of motivation change, we present two psychologically-flavoured assumptions about how motivations are influenced by choices. We show that, with some additional weak assumptions of rationality, motivation change leads to a smaller range of potentially inconsistent choices and not to a larger one as one may think. In particular, conflicts between two motivations can eventually be resolved by choosing different actions and consequently a definite and final preference for an action be revealed.