AGGREGATION OF INDIVIDUALS PREFERENCE INTENSITIES INTO SOCIAL PREFERENCE INTENSITY

A result of John Harsanyi concerns the aggregation of individuals' pre ferences into social preferences. The result states that if the indivi duals in a society and the society as a whole have preference relation s that compare probability distributions on a set of outcomes, and the preference relations satisfy expected-utility conditions and Pareto c onditions, then a utility function for the social preference relation is a positive affine function of utility functions for the individuals ' preference relations. This paper presents an analogous result for pr eference relations that denote intensity of preference, i.e., preferen ce relations that compare exchanges of outcomes. This approach avoids the difficulties of requiring that the individuals in the society have common beliefs regarding uncertainty.