2025/08/18 by Kensei Nakamura, Nakamura, Kensei · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #FOS: Economics and business #Theoretical Economics (econ.TH)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.12542
openalex publication_date 2025/08/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
When aggregating Subjective Expected Utility preferences, the Pareto principle leads to an impossibility result unless the individuals have a common belief. This paper examines the source of this impossibility in more detail by considering the aggregation of a general class of incomplete preferences that can represent gradual ambiguity perceptions. Our result shows that the planner cannot avoid ignoring some individuals unless there is a probability distribution that all individuals agree is most plausible. This means that even if individuals have similar ambiguity perceptions, the impossibility persists as long as some individual's most plausible belief differs even slightly from that of others.