Aggregation of Time Preferences and Comparability of Intergenerational Utilities

Wei Ma

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2609.36744

Aggregation of Time Preferences and Comparability of Intergenerational Utilities

Wei Ma

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Experimental evidence reveals that, in aggregating time preferences, a decision maker exhibits mild aversion to inequality across individuals' evaluations of a stream. Neither the utilitarian nor the maxmin aggregation rule can account for this finding. Building on principles concerning the comparability of intergenerational utilities and intergenerational fairness, this paper axiomatizes a family of aggregation rules that allow the decision maker to display varying degrees of inequality aversion. These rules fit well with experimental data.

Explore related subjects

econ.TH

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Wei Ma. 2026-09-29. Aggregation of Time Preferences and Comparability of Intergenerational Utilities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36744

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Toward an Attentional Model of Time Discounting

This paper proposes a new theory of time discounting. We assume that when decision makers evaluate a sequence of future rewards, they allocate more attention to large rewards and less attention to small rewards. Moreover, when attention is distributed over a longer time horizon, each period receives less attention. The reductions in attention lead to greater discounting of reward values, and the resulting discount factors follow a distribution similar to the multinomial logit function. We characterize such discount factors using two approaches: an axiomatic analysis based on the optimal discounting framework, and a neuro-computational mechanism based on a simple spiking neural network. The theory explains a wide range of anomalies, including the hidden-zero effect, S-shaped value function, intertemporal correlation aversion, concentration bias, and inconsistent planning. Also, it identifies new determinants for several well-documented phenomena, such as the common difference effect and risk aversion over time lotteries.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Delegated Information Provision

A designer relies on an experimenter to provide information to a decision maker. The experimenter has incentives to persuade rather than merely transmit information. Anticipating this motive, the designer can restrict the set of admissible experiments, but cannot prevent the experimenter from garbling any admissible experiment. We model this situation as delegation over experiments. The optimal delegation set is obtained by comparing maximally informative experiments among those the experimenter has no incentive to garble. When the experimenter's preferences are $S$-shaped, we characterize these experiments as double censorship. Relative to the full-delegation benchmark, double censorship features an intermediate pooling region, inducing a smaller pooling region for the highest states. We show that the designer strictly benefits from imposing a nontrivial delegation set that constrains persuasion while retaining information provision. Applying our results to recommender systems, we show that privacy constraints can arise endogenously to protect consumers against persuasion.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Flow Games with Public Arcs: the Least Core and the Nucleolus

We study flow games with public arcs, an extension of classical cooperative flow games that allows players to use public resources. In these games, a coalition corresponds to a set of arcs, while certain arcs, called public arcs, can be used freely by any coalition. The value of a coalition is the maximum flow value achievable using the arcs controlled by the coalition along with the public arcs. We investigate two solution concepts, the least core and the nucleolus. Both solution concepts provide fair ways to allocate the value of the grand coalition among individual players. We provide polynomial-size formulations of the least core of these games. Besides, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for computing the nucleolus, whether or not the core is empty. This resolves a long-standing gap left by Potters et al. [GEB'06], whose algorithm for the nucleolus of simple flow games with public arcs assumes a non-empty core.

econ.TH↗