Operators for the adjudication of conflicting claims

We consider the problem of allocating some amount of an infinitely divisible and homogeneous resource among agents having claims on this resource that cannot be jointly honored. A “rule” associates with each such problem a feasible division. Our goal is to uncover the structure of the space of rules. For that purpose, we study “operators” on the space, that is, mappings that associate to each rule another one. Duality, claims truncation, and attribution of minimal rights are the operators we consider. We first establish a number of results linking them. Then, we determine which properties of rules are preserved under each of these operators, and which are not. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C79; D63; D74