Sufficiency of weaker context axioms

Determine whether weaker axioms than Independence of Irrelevant Comparable Alternatives and Menu Independence of Comparable Alternatives suffice to characterize the menu-contingent utilitarian and setting-contingent utilitarian representations, respectively.

Background

The paper characterizes two relative-utilitarian aggregation rules by weakening Arrow’s independence of irrelevant alternatives and menu-independence conditions to versions restricted to comparable alternatives. The authors explicitly note that their objective was not to identify the weakest axiomatic systems yielding these representations. They discuss weaker conditions based on redundant alternatives and show that the particular replacements considered in the paper do not suffice, but leave open whether other weaker axiomatic systems might be sufficient.

References

That being said, whether weaker axioms would suffice remains an important question.

— Putting Context into Preference Aggregation  (2609.19888 - Peitler et al., 17 Sep 2026) in Section 2, Discussion

Of course, this is driven by our assumption of past indifference. We leave it to future research to determine whether this assumption is plausible.

— Putting Context into Preference Aggregation  (2609.19888 - Peitler et al., 17 Sep 2026) in Section 3.2, Intertemporal Welfare