Efficient allocation with ordinal preference intensities

TL;DR

This paper introduces new allocation criteria that leverage ordinal preference intensities, enabling more efficient and welfare-enhancing assignments without requiring full cardinal utilities or monetary transfers.

Contribution

It proposes intensity-efficient and intensity-positional allocation methods that utilize combined ordinal preferences and intensities to improve efficiency.

Findings

New dominance concept for efficiency analysis

Generalized Borda scoring for allocation refinement

Achieves stronger welfare gains without full cardinal utilities

Abstract

Standard ordinal allocation methods ignore how strongly agents value different improvements, while cardinal methods require additional assumptions that are often considered too demanding. This paper studies assignment problems in the middle ground environment of *ordinal preference intensities* where agents can rank alternatives as well as preference improvements. The two criteria it proposes--*intensity-efficient* and *intensity-positional* allocations--use this combined information to refine Pareto efficiency via a novel dominance concept and a generalization of Borda-style scoring, respectively.These criteria point in new directions where stronger welfare gains are possible without cardinal utility or monetary transfers assumptions.