Set Of Judgments Research Articles

The Scandal of Particularity

The Scandal of Particularity Randi Rashkover Knowledge is always about power in one way or another. Politicians, theologians, philosophers, and social theorists have realized this for a long time. We must, Spinoza told us, be wary of ecclesiastical efforts to control belief. Kant distinguished between an ethics rooted in an object we want and a practical knowledge driven by a law “free” from interest. Weber taught us about instrumental knowledge that worked to achieve sought‐for ends. Habermas enlightened us to a different sort of knowledge that placed “understanding” over acquisition as its goal but even so, sustained a vision of what constituted “right” knowledge and designated the line drawn to siphon off falsehood. Of course we cannot mention a connection between knowledge and power and not invoke Marx, who taught us that knowledge is not only about acquiring power but about sustaining it as well. The exposure of power as a factor in knowledge about religion has become a frequently noted phenomenon. The study of religion is not an innocent affair. According to Robert Orsi “[t]he discipline of Religious Studies has always been organized around a distinct and identifiable set of moral values and judgments. The usually unacknowledged centrality of the values in the working life of the discipline has limited the range of human practices, needs and responses that count as religion.”1 Along the same lines, Talal Asad’s challenge to Clifford Geertz’s definitional approach to religion reminds us that to define is to control. It is to delimit or assert a power over and against the phenomenon one claims to be able to name. No doubt, Geertz saw much of his work as an effort to protect religion from the encroachment of the secular but Geertz’s implicit heroism registered as an exercise in intellectual coercion and order‐making, here again excising out what remained unruly, contingent, mysterious, and unknowable. Orsi and Asad’s insights in‐hand, scholars of religion now work to expose what were hidden and sometimes repressed impulses toward containment. This work further illuminated how the effort to contain and control knowledge undermines the very desire for power driving this approach since control is a response to fear or loss—a testimony to powerlessness and the very opposite of authentic power and freedom. If one applies these considerations to the question of how Jews may know about Christianity and how Christians may know about Judaism, we meet with an extraordinary situation because historically speaking, Jewish–Christian relations did not arise from an effort by either party to retain a status quo. Rather, these relations arose from a dramatically different context of chaos and confusion. The Holocaust left Jews and Christians bereft of power, bereft of the ability to contain and control knowledge not only of the other but of themselves as well. Jewish–Christian Studies emerged within and not outside of the Fackenheimian shadow that demanded a full coming to terms with the suffering of the victims in the Holocaust prior to a retrieval of any piece of Christianity or Judaism. Incapable of naming the event and its players, post‐Holocaust Jewish and Christian thought did not lapse into a kenotic undoing. Denuded of power, both traditions sat amidst the confusion of variables, the confusion of positions, the confusion of questions and lost answers. A bombed‐out city of broken ideas and shattered foundations, the Sitz im Leben of post‐Holocaust Jewish–Christian reflection meant a mandated survey of the rubble. Much of what was found was distorted. We may recall the now famous “Mauriac Foreward”2 to Eli Wiesel’s Night with its “What did I say to him? Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him—the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world?”3 and the shadow of confusion it cast upon our understanding of that book. We may also recall Richard Rubenstein’s interview with Dr. Heinrich Gruber during which Gruber, a man Rubenstein described as “devoted to the work of healing and reconciliation,”4 nonetheless proclaimed to Rubenstein during the interview that “the problem in Germany is that the Jews have not learned anything from what happened to them…I...

Ranking judgments in Arrow’s setting

In this paper, I investigate the relationship between preference and judgment aggregation, using the notion of ranking judgment introduced in List and Pettit (Synthese 140(1-2):207-235, 2004). Ranking judgments were introduced in order to state the logical connections between the impossibility theorem of aggregating sets of judgments proved in List and Pettit (Economics and Philosophy 18:89-110, 2002) and Arrow’s theorem (Arrow, Social choice and individual values, 1963). I present a proof of the theorem concerning ranking judgments as a corollary of Arrow’s theorem, extending the translation between preferences and judgments defined in List and Pettit (Synthese 140(1-2):207-235, 2004) to the conditions on the aggregation procedure.

Incorporating Judgement in Fan Charts

AbstractWithin a decision‐making group, such as a central bank's monetary‐policy committee, group members often hold differing views about the future of key economic variables. Such differences of opinion can be thought of as reflecting differing sets of judgement. This paper suggests modelling each agent's judgement as one scenario in a macroeconomic model. Each judgement set has a specific dynamic impact on the system and, accordingly, a particular predictive density—or fan chart—associated with it. A weighted linear combination of the predictive densities yields a final predictive density that reflects the uncertainty perceived by the agents generating the forecast.

Towards an Ontology of Fetishes

Alphonso Lingis (1933– ) is an American continental philosopher and translator who is currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University.1 Associated with the phenomenology, existentialism, and the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Lingis’s philosophical influences also encompass the literary works of Pierre Klossowski and Yukio Mishima, Michel Tournier, and the postpsychoanalytic theory of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. Lingis’s philosophical concerns are thus similar to those of major continental philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault, and with whom he often engages in sustained dialogues on everything from sensuality and anthropology to travelogue, the human body, inanimate objects, the elements, and perception.

Imagining value, imagining users: Academic technology transfer for health innovation

Governments have invested heavily in the clinical and economic promise of health innovation and express increasing concern with the efficacy and efficiency of the health innovation system. In considering strategies for ‘better’ health innovation, policy makers and researchers have taken a particular interest in the work of universities and related public research organizations: How do these organizations identify and transfer promising innovations to market, and do these efforts make best use of public sector investments? We conducted an ethnographic study of technology transfer offices (TTOs) in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, to consider the place of health and health system imperatives in judgments of value in early-stage health innovation. Our analysis suggests that the valuation process is poorly specified as a set of task-specific judgments. Instead, we argue that technology transfer professionals are active participants in the construction of the innovation and assign value by ‘imagining’ the end product in its ‘context of use’. Oriented as they are to the commercialization of health technology, TTOs understand users primarily as market players. The immediate users of TTOs' efforts are commercial partners (i.e., licensees, investors) who are capable of translating current discoveries into future commodities. The ultimate end users – patients, clinicians, health systems – are the future consumers of the products to be sold. Attention to these proximate and more distal users in the valuation process is a complex and constitutive feature of the work of health technology transfer. At the same time, judgements about individual technologies are made in relation to a broader imperative through which TTOs seek to imagine and construct sustainable innovation systems. Judgments of value are rendered sensible in relation to the logic of valuation for systems of innovation that, in turn, configure users of health innovation in systemic ways.

Justifying Justice: Ricoeur’s Words of Wisdom

Justifying Justice: Ricoeur’s Words of Wisdom1 Dinda L. Gorlée (bio) Remembering the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) and the hermeneutic thoughts that won him worldwide fame, we widely acclaim his love of justice and human vulnerability that made him lash out against injustice. His protest against the conflict of good and evil in contemporary society was interpreted by him in law, medicine, theology, and politics. Ricoeur’s pluralistic, adversarial, and disputatious struggle in those realms was a future-oriented philosophical approach against ignorance, victimization, xenophobia, illness, and other ethical, political, or religious human fears. At the same time, Ricoeur’s precise thinking belonged to the old-style philosophy, in the history-linked sense that he used classical authors as his main sources. Ricoeur’s argumentation is built on Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and George W. F. Hegel and on scientific and intellectual movements as the Enlightenment and Romanticism until present-day philosophy (Hannah Arendt, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas). In his Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BC), Aristotle discussed the moral virtue of sophia as theoretical wisdom and phronesis as practical wisdom and Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) facing as it stands for Ricoeur “a dissatisfaction with life over against the prohibition of suicide, personal distress over against the prohibition of false promises, another’s distress against the command to cultivate one’s talents” (128). Aristotle and Kant seem in this book to become Ricoeur’s favorite starting-points in his search for a contemporary ethics and a new capacity to act. Goodness is a duty to speak and to act. [End Page 293] The final collection of lectures and essays, Reflections on The Just is a continuation of The Just (2000). Both volumes hold the same cover image, a shadowy pair of scales figuring a male nude on top of one scale, symbolizing not so much external justice or social legality as inner judgment setting in motion the psychic (and psychosomatic) weighing of good and evil, right and wrong. Ricoeur made the false “shadows” of the image visible, including the “‘secret’ or ‘silence’ regarding the overall sense of his enterprise” (154). The Just, the previous book, totals 161 pages, whereas the Reflections on The Just counts 265 pages. The extensive appendix to the second book should add new material to the first, but the 265 pages are a surplus for an “expansion” or further unfolding. The fifteen essays are preceded by a lengthy introduction (1–41), which in itself is a review of (part of) the essays. Reflections on The Just poses an embarrassing and paralyzing question to this reviewer. Now only is the book a review (re-thinking) of the previous book, but the review of the volume has been turned into a review of a review. Such a reviewed review turns out to be a dissecting strategy, leaving the critical maneuver smashed and stripped of its vital contours. In short, a review must be the personal evidence of a “witness,” but the written attestation should prove valuable as a medium of some “proof.” Writing this review of Reflections on The Just could become a self-reflexive infraction and could degenerate into a penal punishment. Reflections on The Just has a speculative title—the French original was Le Juste 2 (2001) and the Reflections is supposed to be a secondary addition to the previous The Just. As reported in the OED, a “reflection” notes a critical angle of the “action of bending, turning, or folding back” taken in figurative sense as an “action of turning (back) or fixing of thoughts on some subject; meditation, deep or serious consideration.” Reflections suggests Ricoeur’s self-reflexions in his professorial spirit of self-education passed on to the readers or students, probably legal laymen. The Just is derived from Plato’s Dialogues: the verb “to dikaion (which will also be that of the Latin and German neuter), brought to the level of a substantialized adjective . . . . This return to the properly neutral use of the neuter adjective, turned into a substantive term, authorizes a broad opening to the conceptual field” (1). Ricoeur’s pirouette is an ungrammatical turn, evidenced by...

Modeling human aesthetic perception of visual textures

Texture is extensively used in areas such as product design and architecture to convey specific aesthetic information. Using the results of a psychological experiment, we model the relationship between computational texture features and aesthetic properties of visual textures. Contrary to previous approaches, we build a layered model, which provides insights into hierarchical relationships involved in human aesthetic texture perception. This model uses a set of intermediate judgements to link computational texture features with aesthetic texture properties. We pursue two different approaches for modeling. (1) Supervised machine-learning methods are used to generate linear and nonlinear models from the experimental data automatically. The quality of these models is discussed, mainly focusing on interpretability and accuracy. (2) We apply a psychological-based approach that models the processing pathways in human perception of naturalness, introducing judgement dimensions (principal components) mediating the relationship between texture features and naturalness judgements. This multiple mediator model serves as a verification of the machine-learning approach. We conclude with a comparison of these two approaches, highlighting the similarities and discrepancies in terms of identified relationships between computational texture features and aesthetic properties of visual textures.

Exploring the social value of health‐care interventions: a stated preference discrete choice experiment

Much of the literature on distributive preferences covers specific considerations in isolation, and recent reviews have suggested that research is required to inform on the relative importance of various key considerations. Responding to this research recommendation, we explore the distributive preferences of the general public using a set of generic social value judgments. We report on a discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey, using face-to-face interviews, in a sample of the general population (n=259). The context for the survey was resource allocation decisions in the UK National Health Service, using the process of health technology appraisal as an example. The attributes used covered health improvement, value for money, severity of health, and availability of other treatments, and it is the first such survey to use cost-effectiveness in scenarios described to the general public. Results support the feasibility and acceptability of the DCE approach for the elicitation of public preferences. Choice data are used to consider the relative importance of changes across attribute levels, and to model utility scores and relative probabilities for the full set of combinations of attributes and levels in the experimental design used (n=64). Results allow the relative social value of health technology scenarios to be explored. Findings add to a sparse literature on 'social' preferences, and show that DCE data can be used to consider the strength of preference over alternative scenarios in a priority-setting context.

Methods for distance-based judgment aggregation

Judgment aggregation theory, which concerns the translation of individual judgments on logical propositions into consistent group judgments, has shown that group consistency generally cannot be guaranteed if each proposition is treated independently from the others. Developing the right method of abandoning independence is thus a high-priority goal. However, little work has been done in this area outside of a few simple approaches. To fill the gap, we compare four methods based on distance metrics between judgment sets. The methods generalize the premise-based and sequential priority approaches to judgment aggregation, as well as distance-based preference aggregation. They each guarantee group consistency and implement a range of distinct functions with different properties, broadening the available tools for social choice. A central result is that only one of these methods (not previously considered in the literature) satisfies three attractive properties for all reasonable metrics.

Evaluation of A “Direct-Comparison” Approach to Automatic Switching In Omnidirectional/Directional Hearing Aids

Hearing aids today often provide both directional (DIR) and omnidirectional (OMNI) processing options with the currently active mode selected automatically by the device. The most common approach to automatic switching involves "acoustic scene analysis" where estimates of various acoustic properties of the listening environment (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio [SNR], overall sound level) are used as a basis for switching decisions. The current study was carried out to evaluate an alternative, "direct-comparison" approach to automatic switching that does not involve assumptions about how the listening environment may relate to microphone preferences. Predictions of microphone preference were based on whether DIR- or OMNI-processing of a given listening environment produced a closer match to a reference template representing the spectral and temporal modulations present in clean speech. A descriptive and correlational study. Predictions of OMNI/DIR preferences were determined based on degree of similarity between spectral and temporal modulations contained in a reference, clean-speech template, and in OMNI- and DIR-processed recordings of various listening environments. These predictions were compared with actual preference judgments (both real-world judgments and laboratory responses to the recordings). Predictions of microphone preference were based on whether DIR- or OMNI-processing of a given listening environment produced a closer match to a reference template representing clean speech. The template is the output of an auditory processing model that characterizes the spectral and temporal modulations associated with a given input signal (clean speech in this case). A modified version of the spectro-temporal modulation index (mSTMI) was used to compare the template to both DIR- and OMNI-processed versions of a given listening environment, as processed through the same auditory model. These analyses were carried out on recordings (originally collected by Walden et al, 2007) of OMNI- and DIR-processed speech produced in a range of everyday listening situations. Walden et al reported OMNI/DIR preference judgments made by raters at the same time the field recordings were made and judgments based on laboratory presentations of these recordings to hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners. Preference predictions based on the mSTMI analyses were compared with both sets of preference judgments. The mSTMI analyses showed better than 92% accuracy in predicting the field preferences and 82-85% accuracy in predicting the laboratory preference judgments. OMNI processing tended to be favored over DIR processing in cases where the analysis indicated fairly similar mSTMI scores across the two processing modes. This is consistent with the common clinical assignment of OMNI mode as the default setting, most likely to be preferred in cases where neither mode produces a substantial improvement in SNR. Listeners experienced with switchable OMNI/DIR hearing aids were more likely than other listeners to favor the DIR mode in instances where mSTMI scores only slightly favored DIR processing. A direct-comparison approach to OMNI/DIR mode selection was generally successful in predicting user preferences in a range of listening environments. Future modifications to the approach to further improve predictive accuracy are discussed.

The grey extent analysis

PurposeThe aim is to present a novel approach for tackling multi‐attribute decision problems with using concepts from grey system theory and the extent analysis method.Design/methodology/approachUnderlying judgment set of a multi‐attribute decision problem is modeled with employing grey numbers. Fundamental principles for comparing a set of grey numbers are established. A procedure for evaluating the decision alternatives is explained in detail and referred to as “The grey extent analysis”.FindingsIt is shown that the proposed procedure can be used as a decision‐making tool where the judgments of the decision maker are not exact (i.e. in terms of grey system terminology they are not “white”).Research limitations/implicationsThe grey numbers utilized are assumed to be asynchronous and uniformly distributed over their domain.Originality/valueThe extent analysis is well studied as an evaluation tool under a fuzzy system. This study is set apart from the previous extent analysis research for two reasons: this paper provides basic guidelines for applying the extent analysis procedure within a grey system; the (grey) number comparison principles are totally different.

Perceptions of Environmental Health Risks and Care Seeking Behaviors of Vulnerable Urban Households in the Tamale Metropolitan Area

The link between the urban environment and health has long been recognized. In spite of this, the environmental contribution to ill-health continues to increase in many cities of the developing world. The threat of environmental-related diseases is often exacerbated by increasing poverty and social inequities thus making many urban dwellers vulnerable, especially low-income households. Little is however known of how these environmental threats to human life are perceived by these vulnerable groups. It is in this context that this study was undertaken to assess peoples' perceptions of environmental risks and their priorities regarding health care, through focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that risks have many dimensions and mean far more to vulnerable households than the possible health effects. Moreover, each way of perceiving risk embodies its own set of subjective value judgments based on experiences. Decisions to seek health care are influenced by a combination of cultural perceptions about disease causality and knowledge of curative efficacy with modern health care generally considered a last resort. The paper concludes that health risks cannot be seen in isolation from physical, social, cultural and economic forces, all of which are related to life in general. It calls for risk prevention measures to be planned within a socio-cultural context, and the inclusion of socio-cultural beliefs in designing community health programmes. Ghana Journal of Development Studies Vol. 4 (21) 2007: pp. 75-89

Economists, value judgments, and climate change: A view from feminist economics

A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would lead to more reliable and useful knowledge.

Possibilistic programming approach for fuzzy multidimensional analysis of preference in group decision making

Multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problems are the most encountered problems in decision making. Fuzziness is inherent in decision making process and linguistic variables are well suited to assessing an alternative on qualitative attributes using fuzzy rating. A few techniques in MADM assess the weights of attributes based on preference information on alternatives. But they are not practical any more when the set of all paired comparison judgments from decision makers (DMs) on attributes are not crisp and also we have to deal with fuzzy decision matrix. This paper investigates the generation of a possibilistic model for multidimensional analysis of preference (LINMAP). The model assesses the fuzzy weights as well as locating the ideal solution with fuzzy decision making preference on attributes and fuzzy decision matrix. All of the information is assumed as triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs). This method is developed in group decision making environments and formulates the problem as a possibilistic programming with multiple objectives.

Reliability of individual valuations of public and private goods: Choice consistency, response time, and preference refinement

We examined the reliability of a large set of paired comparison value judgments involving public goods, private goods, and sums of money. As respondents progressed through a random sequence of paired choices they were each given, their response time decreased and they became more consistent, apparently fine-tuning their responses, suggesting that respondents tend to begin a hypothetical value exercise with relatively imprecise preferences and that experience in expressing preference helps reduce that imprecision. Reliability was greater for private than for public good choices, and greater for choices between a good and a monetary amount than for choices between two goods. However, the reliability for public good choices was only slightly lower than for the private goods.

The impact of non‐mandatory corporate governance on auditors’ client acceptance, risk and planning judgments

We examine the effect of non‐mandatory corporate governance practices on a comprehensive set of audit judgments.1 We provide initial evidence on how auditors respond to corporate governance in an institutional environment where corporate governance is not mandated by law. Based on the agency and resource dependence theories, we hypothesise associations between corporate governance and auditors’ judgments relating to client acceptance, risk assessments, and the extent and timing of substantive testing. Sixty Big 4 audit managers from Singapore are randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions comprising weak, moderate and strong corporate governance. Our results show auditors make more favourable client acceptance judgments when corporate governance is stronger. Clients with stronger corporate governance are assessed as having lower control environment risk. After controlling for control environment risk, we find that stronger corporate governance increases auditors’ reliance on the client's internal controls and reduces the extent of substantive tests. When corporate governance is stronger, we observe that auditors conduct more substantive testing during the interim period compared to the year‐end. Our findings suggest that audit strategies are responsive to the strength of a client's corporate governance.

On the order of the preference intensities in fuzzy AHP

We show that a recently discovered fundamental problem with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) concerning the meaning of the resultant preference intensities is also evident for the fuzzy AHP. We prove that if there is a judgmental inconsistency in the fuzzy pair-wise comparisons, it is impossible to ensure the preservation of the order regarding to preference intensities in the resultant priority vector. Further, it is shown with an example from the published literature that the order of the preference intensities may not be preserved even there is no inconsistency in the judgment set, albeit it is possible to comply with this order via using fuzzy preference programming (FPP) methodology. Finally, it is proved that if the interval judgments regarding to the decompositions of original judgments to α- level sets are consistent, FPP guarantees the preservation of the order of the preference intensities at those levels.

Do Bottlenose Dolphins (<I>Tursiops truncatus</I>) Have Distinct and Stable Personalities?

Psychologists have long been interested in the role of individual differences in the behavior of many species, particularly consistent differences that might reflect temperament or personality. Only recently has animal personality become an important and credible topic of research, however. In an effort to add to the literature on animal personality, the possibility of consistent personality characteristics was explored for a previously unstudied species, the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Dolphin personality was assessed using a measure that evaluated possible personality characteristics. The measure consisted of a list of adjectives and descriptions commonly associated with dolphin behaviors (e.g., “curious: appears to be interested in new situations or objects”). Judges rated each animal on each description using a seven-point rating scale. The stability of individual dolphin personality characteristics was assessed by comparing results from judgments of individual dolphin personalities collected prior to Hurricane Katrina with those collected approximately 15 months later. In the interval between these two ratings, the dolphins’ home at MarineLife Oceanarium was destroyed, and the dolphins were subsequently relocated to a facility in the Bahamas. The second set of judgments was made by individuals in the Bahamas who had no experience with the dolphins prior to Hurricane Katrina and no information about the results of the earlier dolphin personality assessments. The results support the notions that dolphins demonstrate different personalities and that these personalities are relatively stable over time and across situations.

How Do Individuals Solve the Doctrinal Paradox in Collective Decisions?

A seven-judge committee must decide whether to promote a candidate to a position requiring a young, trilingual person. Each judge estimates whether the candidate is young, and whether she is trilingual (see Table 1). Individual judgments on whether the candidate has the correct profile follow logically by conjunction. The candidate is young for a majority of judges (4/7) and is trilingual for a majority of judges (4/7), yet only two judges think she has the right profile and this group-level inconsistency arises even though each individual set of judgments is consistent. How should the committee proceed? Should the judges vote on the whole conjunction (the profile) and reject the candidate, or should they vote separately on each conjunct (the criteria) and promote the candidate? This problem, an instance of the more general doctrinal paradox, has generated a substantial literature in law, economics, political science, philosophy, and computer science (Bovens & Rabinowicz, 2006; Brennan, 2001; Chapman, 1998; Dietrich, 2006; List, 2003, 2005; List & Pettit, 2002, 2004; Pettit, 2001). However, it has never been addressed from an empirical-behavioral perspective (although see Kameda, 1991). In this article, I report a study testing three factors that contribute to judges' preferences for voting on the whole conjunction or voting separately on each conjunct. (See List & Pettit, 2002, for other escape routes from the paradox.) The three factors are as follows:

The Development of the Concept of Collective Dominance in the ECMR. From its Inception to its Current Status

This article analyses how the concept of collective dominance is applied in the case law of the European Control Merger Regulation and how the assessment criteria have been developed through this case law precedence. In spite of the extensive development of the notion of collective dominance accompanied by the improvement of the checklist of the criteria on which the European Commission founds its assessment of collective dominance, legal uncertainty still remains. The CFI judgment in the Airtours case constitutes a clear indication that legal uncertainty is not likely to fade. In the aftermath of Airtours, reforms were adopted that included the adoption of the SIEC test as a more efficient tool in assessing collective mergers. The Airtours judgment outlined three criteria for the assessment of collective dominance, namely transparency, retaliation and countervailing power by customers and competitors. The IMPALA judgment, the first annulment of a clearance decision, implies a lower threshold for collective dominance than the Airtours judgment set. This article will present an extensive account of the development of the concept of collective dominance under the ECMR. It will assess the factors that make a market conducive to collective dominance and determine the criteria that need to be applied by authorities in the assessment of mergers leading to collective dominance.