Use of Weak Additivity
Some procedures in fair division do not need the value of goods to be additive and only require weak additivity. In particular the adjusted winner procedure only requires weak additivity.
Case where the assumptions might fail would be either
- The value of A and C together is the less than the sum of their values. For instance two versions of the same CD may not be as valuable to a person as the sum of the values of the individual CDs on their own.
- The values of B and D together may be more than their individual values added. For instance two matching bookends may be much more valuable than twice the value of an individual bookend.
The use of money as compensation can often turn real cases like these into situations where the weak additivity condition is satisfied even if the values are not exactly additive.
The value of a type of goods, e.g. chairs, dependent on having some of those goods already is called the marginal utility.
Read more about this topic: Weakly Additive
Famous quotes containing the word weak:
“Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)