On Capacity-Filling and Substitutable Choice Rules

Abstract

Each capacity-filling and substitutable choice rule is known to have a maximizer-collecting representation: there exists a list of priority orderings such that from each choice set that includes more alternatives than the capacity, the choice is the union of the priority orderings’ maximizers (Aizerman and Malishevski, 1981). We introduce the notion of a critical set and constructively prove that the number of critical sets for a choice rule determines its smallest size maximizer-collecting representation. We show that responsive choice rules require the maximal number of priority orderings in their smallest size maximizer-collecting representations among all capacity-filling and substitutable choice rules. We also analyze maximizer-collecting choice rules in which the number of priority orderings equals the capacity. We show that if the capacity is greater than three and the number of alternatives exceeds the capacity by at least two, then no capacity-filling and substitutable choice rule has a maximizer-collecting representation of the size equal to the capacity.

Keywords: Choice rules, acceptance, substitutability, path independence, prime atom

JEL Classification: D01, D03, C78, D47, D78