Truthful implementation and preference aggregation in restricted domains

In a setting where agents have quasi-linear utilities over social alternatives and a transferable commodity, we consider three properties that a social choice function may possess: truthful implementation (in dominant strategies); monotonicity in differences; and lexicographic affine maximization. We introduce the notion of a flexible domain of preferences that allows elevation of pairs and study which of these conditions implies which others in such domain. We provide a generalization of the theorem of Roberts (1979) [36] in restricted valuation domains. Flexibility holds (and the theorem is not vacuous) if the domain of valuation profiles is restricted to the space of continuous functions defined on a compact metric space, or the space of piecewise linear functions defined on an affine space, or the space of smooth functions defined on a compact differentiable manifold. We provide applications of our results to public goods allocation settings, with finite and infinite alternative sets. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.