The note puts forward the idea of revealed desirability, a novel instrument, which like revealed preference is observable from choice and important for individual and social welfare. We provide the axiomatic underlying individual’s choice model, preliminary experimental results that support the idea, and an appealing allocation rule that uses the revealed desirability information along with the revealed-preference information.

We confront the philosophical literature on fair division problems with axiomatic and game-theoretic work in economics. Firstly, we show that the proportionality method advocated in Curtis is not implied by a general principle of fairness, and that the proportional rule cannot be explicated axiomatically from that very principle. Secondly, we suggest that Broome’s notion of claims is too restrictive and that game-theoretic approaches can rectify this shortcoming. More generally, we argue that axiomatic and game-theoretic work in economics is an indispensable (...) ingredient of any theorizing about fair division problems and allocative justice. (shrink)

New and recent axioms for cooperative games with transferable utilities are introduced. The non-negative player axiom requires to assign a non-negative payoff to a player that belongs to coalitions with non-negative worth only. The axiom of addition invariance on bi-partitions requires that the payoff vector recommended by a value should not be affected by an identical change in worth of both a coalition and the complementary coalition. The nullified solidarity axiom requires that if a player who becomes null weakly loses (...) from such a change, then every other player should weakly lose too. We study the consequence of imposing some of these axioms in addition to some classical axioms. It turns out that the resulting values or set of values have all in common to split efficiently the worth achieved by the grand coalition according to an exogenously given weight vector. As a result, we also obtain new characterizations of the equal division value. (shrink)

:Robert Nozick allegedly introduced his liberal theory of private ownership as an objection to theories of end-state justice. Nevertheless, we show that, in a stylized framework for the allocation of goods in joint ventures, both approaches can be seen as complementary. More precisely, in such a context, self-ownership followed by voluntary transfer can lead to end-state fairness. Furthermore, under a certain solidarity condition, the only way to achieve end-state fairness, following Nozick’s procedure, is to endorse an egalitarian rule for the (...) initial assignment of rights. (shrink)

In the article ‘How to be absolutely fair, Part I: the Fairness formula’, we presented the first theory of comparative and absolute fairness. Here, we relate the implications of our Fairness formula to economic theories of fair division. Our analysis makes contributions to both philosophy and economics: to the philosophical literature, we add an axiomatic discussion of proportionality and fairness. To the economic literature, we add an appealing normative theory of absolute and comparative fairness that can be used to evaluate (...) axioms and division rules. Also, we provide a novel definition and characterization of the absolute priority rule. (shrink)