A framework for expected capability sets

Abstract

This paper addresses decision-aiding problems involving multiple objectives and uncertain states of the world. Inspired by the capability approach, we focus on cases where a policy maker chooses an act that, combined with a state of the world, leads to a set of choices for citizens. While no preferential information is available to construct importance parameters for the criteria, we can obtain probabilities for the different states. To effectively support decision-aiding in this context, we propose two procedures that merge the potential set of choices for each state of the world taking into account their respective probabilities. Our procedures satisfy several fundamental and desirable propositions that characterize the outcomes.