Approaches for inequity-averse sorting

Abstract

In this paper we consider multi-criteria sorting problems where the decision maker (DM) has equity concerns. In such problems each alternative represents an allocation of an outcome (e.g. income, service level, health outputs) over multiple indistinguishable entities. We propose three sorting algorithms that are different from the ones in the current literature in the sense that they apply to cases where the DM's preference relation satisfies anonymity and convexity properties. The first two algorithms are based on additive utility function assumption and the third one is based on the symmetric Choquet integral concept. We illustrate their use by sorting countries into groups based on their income distributions using real-life data. To the best of our knowledge our work is the first attempt to solve sorting problems in a symmetric setting.