Pareto Efficient Research Articles

Differentially Private Condorcet Voting

Designing private voting rules is an important and pressing problem for trustworthy democracy. In this paper, under the framework of differential privacy, we propose a novel famliy of randomized voting rules based on the well-known Condorcet method, and focus on three classes of voting rules in this family: Laplacian Condorcet method (CMLAP), exponential Condorcet method (CMEXP), and randomized response Condorcet method (CMRR), where λ represents the level of noise. We prove that all of our rules satisfy absolute monotonicity, lexi-participation, probabilistic Pareto efficiency, approximate probabilistic Condorcet criterion, and approximate SD-strategyproofness. In addition, CMRR satisfies (non-approximate) probabilistic Condorcet criterion, while CMLAP and CMEXP satisfy strong lexi-participation. Finally, we regard differential privacy as a voting axiom, and discuss its relations to other axioms.

ANTI-RENT CONTROL LEGISLATION A BOON OR BANE: ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE WAQF(AMENDMENT) ACT, 2013

With various governments enacting laws in its favour, Rent Control is among the leading welfare measures to have endured the test of time in Indian polity. However, occasionally one comes across legislation that promotes an anti-rent control stance. One such example and the legislation analysed by this paper is the 2013 amendment to The Waqf Act. When read in congruence with sections of the Waqf Properties Lease Rules of 2014, the amendment leads to the regulation of waqf properties with regards to evictions and bidding based on circle rates to fall outside the scope of the State Rent Control Laws and promotes free market transactions. This research paper aims to use law and economics as a lens to decipher the viability of the Amendment Act and examines if, in a relatively pro-tenant jurisprudence, this legislation stands out like a sore thumb or a welcome change? The Delhi Rent Control Act is the Rent Control law adopted for this study. Various pedagogical tools from the field of law and economics, be it a cost-benefit analysis, game theory, pareto efficiency and bargaining theory aid this discovery. The research paper also looks at judgments passed by Indian courts considering the tenants’ rights at stake vis-a-vis the benefits sought to be gained by the Waqf Board and the public. Facilitated by these various means, this paper makes an argument in favour of the amendment.

Allocative value of design and technological know-how

Industrial transformations in the production and business sectors provide a significant increase in the added value created by society through the use of innovative technologies and the release of innovative products. Additional added value is provided by the use of a combination in production processes: design and technological know-how, progressive means and objects of labor, highly qualified personnel, the attractiveness of a product or service for the customer. Allocative (distributive) cost of design and technological know-how implies the formation of a mechanism for optimizing the use of limited resources of society in "Industry 4.0". The optimization mechanism includes economic tools and levers. The economic tool forms a differentiated distribution of the additional added value of an innovative product between the design organization, the manufacturer and consumers of products and services, depending on the technical level of new products. The lever ensures the Pareto efficiency of these subjects and a high probability of implementing innovative developments. Economic levers are the dependence of the amount of encouragement of the subjects of innovation activity on two factors: the scale of production of the created innovative products and its priority for Belarus.

Utilizing the strategic concession behavior in a bargaining game for optimal allocation of water in a transboundary river basin during water bankruptcy

In basins that lie across multiple administrative boundaries, for instance in international river basins like the Nile, water tends to be contested especially during times of scarcity. Riparian countries sharing a transboundary river basin may emphasize the multi-dimensionality of their water demands to obtain access to a greater portion of the available shared water. As a result, the frequency and intensity of water conflicts may increase, hindering the sustainable development of riparian countries and threatening the security and stability of the whole region. Therefore, designing a fair, reasonable, and adaptive allocation scheme is of paramount importance to ensure the integrity of livelihoods and ecosystem health. This paper analyzed the general features of transboundary river basins and built an allocation mechanism combining Bankruptcy Theory with Bargaining and Concession games. A Bankruptcy-Concession-Bargaining Game Model (BCBGM) was constructed to ensure multi-agent participation, multi-stage negotiation, and optimal allocation. Considering the different water demand preferences and linked satisfaction functions, the framework yielded an optimal solution by making concessions on the water claims of riparian countries. As a case study, the proposed model was applied to allocate the limited water resources of the Euphrates-Tigris River. To further measure the stability of model allocation results, a model was built to evaluate the stability of water allocation. The results show that the stability of the allocation output from the proposed allocation framework was relatively high compared to those obtained from classical allocation rules, such as Proportion, Adjusted Proportion, Constrained Equal Loss, and Constrained Equal Award. The model's results satisfied the Pareto efficiency, individual rationality, and maximized group utility. Therefore, for the most part, the allocation outputs of the proposed scheme were generally self-enforceable and sustainable.

A note on “Levitin–Polyak well-posedness in set optimization concerning Pareto efficiency” [Positivity.25(2021), 1923–1942

A note on “Levitin–Polyak well-posedness in set optimization concerning Pareto efficiency” [Positivity.25(2021), 1923–1942

Agency selling or reselling? Online selling format selection in the presence of customer strategic behavior

Online sales have been widely used through two typical formats: agency selling and reselling. This study focuses on the interaction between the customer strategic behavior and channel members’ selling format selection. In this paper, we examine the scenarios without and with strategic customers, and then investigate the selling format preferences as well as the selling format of Pareto efficiency for the channel members. The results show that either agency selling or reselling can be a selling format of Pareto efficiency. Higher accessing fees and lower wholesale prices might lead to the agency selling as a selling format of Pareto efficiency, and lower accessing fees and higher wholesale prices might lead to the reselling as a selling format of Pareto efficiency. Interestingly, we demonstrate that the presence of customer strategic behavior might cause the manufacturer and intermediary to yield the end-seller position in the channel. Furthermore, we show that the customer strategic behavior would not necessarily guarantee the increase of the customers’ overall welfare, i.e., only when the deterministic demand level is higher than a threshold, the customer strategic behavior is beneficial, otherwise, the customer strategic behavior might cause harm to their overall welfare. Our main results are still valid with endogenous wholesale price and inventory cost, but an exogenous wholesale price is conductive for upstream sellers to reach cooperation and Pareto efficiency.

A new impossibility result for random assignments

We know that ex-post Pareto efficiency is possible with strategy-proofness and weak envy-freeness while ordinally efficiency is incompatible with them. We strengthen this impossibility for random assignments and show that it prevails if ordinal efficiency is weakened to robust ex-post Pareto efficiency, an intermediate notion of efficiency weaker than ordinal efficiency and stronger than ex-post Pareto efficiency. An assignment is robust ex-post Pareto efficient whenever for all of its lottery decomposition, each deterministic assignment in its support is Pareto efficient.

DETERMINING THE OPTIMAL PRICING STRATEGY FOR ONLINE CINEMAS USING AN AGENT-BASED MODEL ON THE EXAMPLE OF IVI AND KINOPOISK

The relevance of the study is justified by the phenomenon of the ever-increasing demand for online cinema services in the presence of free «pirate» resources, the heterogeneity of consumers of online cinemas that form the demand for their services, hence the low predictability of demand. The purpose of the study is to determine the optimal pricing policy in the conditions of competition of online cinemas. The constructed model predicts the demand for the services of the two leaders of the online cinema market with a reliability of more than 99%. Results: in a static game with full information, the price of a Kinopoisk subscription roughly corresponds to the best answer to the Ivi strategy to set the price at the current level; the Ivi subscription price corresponds to one of the Pareto optimal outcomes of the game, characterized by the symmetry of the strategy profile, the Nash equilibrium has not been achieved in reality.

An Analysis of Competition Strategies of Note-taking App Market based on Hotelling Model Theory

Responses to COVID-19 have speeded the adoption of digital technologies by several years, resulting in flourishing Note-taking software markets. This paper studies the competition between the two most popular note-taking apps with horizontal differentiations for tablet users: Notability and GoodNotes 5. A modified Hotelling model is used where firms' persuasive advertisements will affect consumers' preferences, hence implicitly changing their location and their overall travel costs. A two-stage process is considered during firm competition when building up models. In the first stage, firms decide on the levels of advertisement of their products in the first stage, then set different prices to maximize profits. By solving this modified model and analyzing the equilibrium profits, the result shows that advertising leads to the same price tactics for the two firms. However, due to the existence of advertising strategies, firms have to bear the cost of this extra advertising competition. Therefore, both firms in the end will receive lower levels of profits compared to the standard model. Indicating that persuasive advertisement has caused Pareto inefficiency, leading to deadweight loss and reduced profit gains for the two firms.

Pareto efficiency as alternative to Nash equilibrium in competitive discrete location under delivered pricing

We address the facility location problem for firms that sell an homogeneous product and compete on delivered prices. If the firms set equilibrium prices at each market, the problem can be seen as a location game for which there exists a Nash equilibrium if demand is inelastic. However, this equilibrium may be Pareto-inefficient and the firms could decide to collude if they can guarantee themselves higher payoffs than those prescribed by the equilibrium. The aim of this paper is to study the joint profit maximization problem to obtain a collusive solution of the location game (Pareto-efficient) and determine if such a solution is also a Nash equilibrium. We develop Integer Linear Programming models to find Pareto-efficient solutions for multiple and single facility location. Nash equilibria are obtained by the best response procedure. An empirical investigation is performed to compare the joint profit of the firms and the profit of each one of the firms, got through the Pareto-efficient locations, with those got through the Nash equilibrium.

Random assignments with uniform preferences: An impossibility result

Agents have uniform preferences if a weakly decreasing utility function determines each agent's preference ranking over the same order of alternatives. We show that the impossibility in the random assignment problem between strategyproofness, ordinally efficiency, and fairness in the sense of equal division lower bound, prevails even if agents have uniform preferences. Furthermore, it continues to hold even if we weaken the strategyproofness to upper-contour strategyproofness, or the ordinal efficiency to robust ex-post Pareto efficiency.

The Moral Dilemma in Fashion: Using the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game on Animals and the Environment

This study aims to determine the optimal solution to the dilemma that arises from vegan fashion materials by identifying current vegan or cruelty-free fashion brands that advocate “animal-friendly” and revealing how animal ethics should be expressed so that consumers more effectively accept it. This research applies the “prisoner’s dilemma,” which is a situation that is often used in game theory. First, the solution to the dilemma of vegan fashion materials using Pareto efficiency is more ideal and rational than that of the Nash equilibrium point. Second, this study finds that many vegan fashion brands use a blend of synthetic materials rather than animal-derived materials. While all cruelty-free fashion brands have been cooperative with the environment, some are treacherous to animals by allowing the manufacture of animal materials. Additionally, animal-friendly brands are being developed mainly in the United States and Canada.

Use of dose-area product to assess plan quality in robotic radiosurgery

PurposeIn robotic stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), optimal selection of collimators from a set of fixed cones must be determined manually by trial and error. A unique and uniformly scaled metric to characterize plan quality could help identify Pareto-efficient treatment plans. MethodsThe concept of dose-area product (DAP) was used to define a measure (DAPratio) of the targeting efficiency of a set of beams by relating the integral DAP of the beams to the mean dose achieved in the target volume. In a retrospective study of five clinical cases of brain metastases with representative target volumes (range: 0.5–5.68 ml) and 121 treatment plans with all possible collimator choices, the DAPratio was determined along with other plan metrics (conformity index CI, gradient index R50%, treatment time, total number of monitor units TotalMU, radiotoxicity index f12, and energy efficiency index η50%), and the respective Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were calculated. The ability of DAPratio to determine Pareto efficiency for collimator selection at DAPratio < 1 and DAPratio < 0.9 was tested using scatter plots. ResultsThe DAPratio for all plans was on average 0.95 ± 0.13 (range: 0.61–1.31). Only the variance of the DAPratio was strongly dependent on the number of collimators. For each target, there was a strong or very strong correlation of DAPratio with all other metrics of plan quality. Only for R50% and η50% was there a moderate correlation with DAPratio for the plans of all targets combined, as R50% and η50% strongly depended on target size. Optimal treatment plans with CI, R50%, f12, and η50% close to 1 were clearly associated with DAPratio < 1, and plans with DAPratio < 0.9 were even superior, but at the cost of longer treatment times and higher total monitor units. ConclusionsThe newly defined DAPratio has been demonstrated to be a metric that characterizes the target efficiency of a set of beams in robotic SRS in one single and uniformly scaled number. A DAPratio < 1 indicates Pareto efficiency. The trade-off between plan quality on the one hand and short treatment time or low total monitor units on the other hand is also represented by DAPratio.

Pareto efficient matchings with pairwise preferences

In this paper, we consider a matching in a bipartite graph where each vertex has a preference over the edges incident to it. Especially, we consider the case where a preference of a vertex is defined based on comparisons of any two edges incident to it. In this setting, we first consider the problem of checking the existence of a Pareto efficient matching, and we prove that this problem is NP-complete even in some restricted situation. Furthermore, we consider the problem of checking the existence of a Pareto stable matching, which is a matching satisfying stability and Pareto efficiency, under the above general preferences. We first prove that this problem is NP-complete even when there exist a stable matching and a Pareto efficient matching. Then we propose a polynomial-time algorithm for the problem of checking the existence of a Pareto stable matching in trees.

Pareto efficiency without topology

Given a vector optimization problem over spaces endowed with a topological linear structure, existence results for optima (efficient points) are known. Relying only on the linear structure, the set of properly efficient points from a convex set is proved to be nonempty and the sets of Proper efficient points and Pareto efficient points coincide, provided that the set of internal points picked from the corresponding cone is nonempty. This result is appealing since the scalarization of the vector optimization problem is valid without topological requirements. A As an important consequence, we provide the Second Welfare Theorem in vector lattices and especially in Lebesgue spaces holds without topology.

Equity and the Pareto Principle: Does the Pareto Principle Have Moral Force?

This paper was submitted to Nordicum-Mediterraneum in the wake of a call from the journal for papers having to do with Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), to be published in commemoration of the centenary of his death. The original version of the paper was written in 1998 but has never been published previously. It has been heavily revised in response to severe, but well-directed, peer review. The paper analyzes and criticizes the use of what is herein labeled the “Pareto Efficiency Principle” as a normative mandate justifying, or even requiring, various “Pareto-efficient” allocative decisions, and it likewise views with a fishy eye the concealed pretense that such justification is delivered by economic science. Some devices commonly used by economists to stave off criticisms of the use of Pareto efficiency as a criterion of “good”, “correct”, or normatively mandated allocative decisions are also explored.

Cooperative Deployment Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for High-Resolution Multi-Airship Earth-Observation Coverage Network

As a platform for Near space-based Earth-observation network, stratospheric airship has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, because of its advantages in endurance, coverage, cost, and durability. However, the airship has low conversion speed and large vehicle inertia, so it is significant to deploy Multi-airship Earth-observation Coverage Network (MAEON) collaboratively. To this end, this paper proposes an Earth-observation model with considerations of loading devices side-swing characteristics and field of view (FOV), and establishes a collaborative deployment model of MAEON to realize objectives of observation coverage, target point statistics, observation resolution, multi-airship community profit. To obtain the solution set of cooperative deployment problem efficiently and widely, a multi-objective evolutionary optimization algorithm (MOEA) with associated bi-criterion is proposed. Then, weight vector distribution control with dynamic adjustment is introduced to ensure that the solution set spreads more uniform and extensive. By embedding improved evolution factors, Non-Pareto criterion (NPC) and Pareto criterion (PC) based parts co-evolve and exchange information, which is effective in diversity and convergence. The normalized weight sum method is modified by adding the moderators, which are controlled by the population outcome in the iterative process. The experiment is repeated in 8 groups of data, and compared with 4 popular MOEAs. Through simulation experiments, it can be seen that the proposed algorithm has advantages in performance, universality, and stability.

Capitalism and Distributive Justice: Musings of a Mormon Economist

Capitalism and Distributive Justice: Musings of a Mormon Economist

On one approach to choosing unloading stations according to egalitarian principles in transport-type optimization problems

A multi-agent approach has been developed for solving the optimization transport-type problems. As an object of application, a multimodal system of transportation of grain cargoes with cost indicators is considered. The egalitarian principles of welfare theory implemented in the form of the Pareto criterion are used as the methodological basis of the research. A significant role belongs to the mathematical experiment as an effective tool for simulation modeling. The optimization algorithm developed in a mathematically oriented software environment makes it possible to effectively manipulate the values of cost indicators and constraints in the problem.

Mediated talk: An experiment

We experimentally compare mediated (cheap) talk with direct (cheap) talk. Theory, guided by a characterization of equilibria in both environments, suggests that mediated talk has the potential to improve information sharing and welfare relative to direct talk. We sharpen the theory prediction by invoking Crawford's (2003) language-anchored level-k analysis. In the experiment, we find that mediated talk can indeed facilitate information transmission. We also find, however, that this requires that the language employed conforms with the mediation mechanism: mediation mechanisms improve information sharing for a variety of conforming languages, but fail to do so with a nonconforming language. These experimental findings match the predictions from the language-anchored level-k analysis. Strikingly, this is the case even when a whole array of alternative selection criteria (including iterative deletion of dominated strategies, strict equilibrium, Pareto efficiency, etc.) make a unique common prediction that sharply disagrees with the language-anchored level-k prediction.