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An axiomatic re-characterization of the Kemeny rule

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Abstract

The Kemeny rule is one of the well studied decision rules. In this paper we show that the Kemeny rule is the only rule which is unbiased, monotone, strongly tie-breaking, strongly gradual, and weighed tournamental. We show that these conditions are logically independent.

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Notes

  1. In the domain of social choice rules, Nitzan (1981) introduced “Closeness to Unanimity Procedure” as a first example to distance rationalizability. approachFootnote 2 and showed that the Borda (1784) rule is the closest to unanimity under the Kemeny (1959) distance.

  2. Elkind et al. (2009), Elkind et al. (2010).

  3. Saari and Merlin (2000) characterize all single profile paradoxes and behavior of the Kemeny rule. Klamler (2004) compares the Kemeny rule with other distance based rules such as the Slater (1961) and the Dodgson (1876) rules. In terms of the computational efficiency of the Kemeny rule, see Endriss and de Haan (2015) and Conitzer (2006).

  4. See Can and Storcken (2013).

  5. See Sect. 6.2 for a discussion on these two conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Data Analytics and Digitalisation, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Burak Can

  2. Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Mohsen Pourpouneh

  3. Department of Quantitative Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Ton Storcken

Authors
  1. Burak Can
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  2. Mohsen Pourpouneh
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  3. Ton Storcken
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohsen Pourpouneh.

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This work is mostly financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under the grant with project no. 451-13-017 (VENI, 2014) and partially by Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg. The support of both institutes, therefore, is gratefully acknowledged.

This work is supported by the Center for Blockchains and Electronic Markets (BCM) funded by the Carlsberg Foundation under Grant No. CF18-1112.

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Can, B., Pourpouneh, M. & Storcken, T. An axiomatic re-characterization of the Kemeny rule. Rev Econ Design 26, 447–467 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-021-00259-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-021-00259-2

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