Allocation and Ordering by Weighted Arithmetic Averaging — An Axiomatic Approach

Abstract

As a result of the efforts of a generation of decision theorists, it is now widely accepted that axiomatic theory is a valuable analytical tool for evaluating proposed decision methods. The program of axiomatizing decision criteria, initiated by Arrow [1951], has produced a sophisticated and extensive literature. This program has been at once modest and ambitious, modest in its recognition that rational choice is context sensitive and in its willingness to countenance impossibility theorems, ambitious in its attempt to provide axiomatic foundations for the many varieties of group decision problems.