Social choice with transfers

Abstract

We consider the problem of social choice when transfers between agents are possible. This includes several canonical applications: public-good provision, management of a common resource, settlement of debts, and division of goods. The question of interest is, given a set of possible alternatives, which should be chosen and what transfers, if any, should be made? We show that the Shapley value of the stand-alone game is the only solution to satisfy certain desirable properties.