Aggregation of Models, Choices, Beliefs, and Preferences

Abstract

A natural notion of rationality/consistency for aggregating models is that, for all (possibly aggregated) models A and B, if the output of model A is f(A) and if the output model B is f(B), then the output of the model obtained by aggregating A and B must be a weighted average of f(A) and f(B). Similarly, a natural notion of rationality for aggregating preferences of ensembles of experts is that, for all (possibly aggregated) experts A and B, and all possible choices x and y, if both A and B prefer x over y, then the expert obtained by aggregating A and B must also prefer x over y. Rational aggregation is an important element of uncertainty quantification, and it lies behind many seemingly different results in economic theory: spanning social choice, belief formation, and individual decision making. Three examples of rational aggregation rules are as follows. (1) Give each individual model (expert) a weight (a score) and use weighted averaging to aggregate individual or finite ensembles of models (experts). (2) Order/rank individual model (expert) and let the aggregation of a finite ensemble of individual models (experts) be the highest-ranked individual model (expert) in that ensemble. (3) Give each individual model (expert) a weight, introduce a weak order/ranking over the set of models/experts, aggregate A and B as the weighted average of the highest-ranked models (experts) in A or B. Note that (1) and (2) are particular cases of (3). In this paper, we show that all rational aggregation rules are of the form (3). This result unifies aggregation procedures across different economic environments. Following the main representation, we show applications and extensions of our representation in various separated economics topics such as belief formation, choice theory, and social welfare economics.

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