Lemma Basic Welfare Lemmas
lemma staged

Basic Welfare Lemmas

Three small lemmas keep the welfare layer self-contained.

Monotonicity of utilitarian welfare. If $A$ is pointwise weakly improved by $B$, $$ \bigl(\forall i,\ u_i(A(i)) \le u_i(B(i))\bigr) \Rightarrow W_{\mathrm{util}}(u, A) \le W_{\mathrm{util}}(u, B). $$ In Lean: utilitarianWelfare_mono (immediate from Finset.sum_le_sum).

Unique-agent collapse. If $N$ has exactly one element (the canonical default : N), then $W_{\mathrm{util}}(u, A) = u_{\mathrm{default}}(A(\mathrm{default}))$. In Lean: utilitarianWelfare_unique (@[simp]-tagged).

Egalitarian lower bound on each agent. Every agent obtains at least the egalitarian welfare from their share: $$ \forall i,\ W_{\mathrm{egal}}(u, A) \le u_i(A(i)). $$ In Lean: egalitarianWelfare_le (immediate from Finset.inf'_le).

These are the basic algebraic facts used downstream when comparing utilitarian and egalitarian objectives (see [[social_choice.fair_division.egal_le_util]]).

References

  • [AGT Chapter 11] Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos, and Vazirani, Algorithmic Game Theory. Welfare aggregations.

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