Roberts' Theorem with Neutrality: A Social Welfare Ordering Approach

Abstract: We consider dominant strategy implementation in private values settings, when agents have multi-dimensional types, the set of alternatives is finite, monetary transfers are allowed, and agents have quasi-linear utilities. We show that any implementable and neutral social choice function must be a weighted welfare maximizer if the type space of every agent is an $m$-dimensional open interval, where $m$ is the number of alternatives. When the type space of every agent is unrestricted, Roberts' theorem with neutrality \cite{Roberts79} becomes a corollary to our result. Our proof technique uses a {\em social welfare ordering} approach, commonly used in aggregation literature in social choice theory. We also prove the general (affine maximizer) version of Roberts' theorem for unrestricted type spaces of agents using this approach.