Independence axioms for the provision of multiple public goods as options

We study the problem of providing multiple but identical public goods as "o ptions" to agents with single-peaked preferences, a problem introduced by [ Miyagawa, E., 1998a. Mechanisms for providing a menu of public goods. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester]. For every feasible interval of loc ations and every preference profile, a solution chooses m locations for the m public goods. Each location is an option and each agent selects his most preferred option. For m=2 [Moulin, H., 1984. Generalized Concorcet-winners for single-peaked preferences and single-plateaued preferences, Social Cho ice and Welfare 1, 127-147] studies Nash's and Arrow's Independence of Irre levant Alternatives (IIA). We show that for m=2 the 'extreme peaks' solutio n is the only solution satisfying Pareto-optimality, Nash's IIA, Arrow's II A, and interval continuity. We also show that for m greater than or equal t o3, Pareto-optimality and interval continuity are incompatible. (C) 2001 El sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.