My writing currently spans the following topics: the measurement of power in hierarchical organisations (with my supervisor René van den Brink), conceptions of republican domination (with Stefano Merlo), bankruptcy problems and how cooperative game theory should deal with them (with Roland Luttens), the demands of morality (with Ben Ferguson), the demands of rationality (with Akshath Jitendranath), and the history and philosophy of measuring power. See below for the published work, including final drafts, and for a list of papers in progress.
2021, Penrose and the Indifferent Crowd, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including A Symposium on Carl Menger at the Centenary of His Death, 39B: 77–94
2020, (with Ben Ferguson) A Dilemma for Permissibility-Based Solutions to the Paradox of Supererogation, Analysis, 80 (4): 723–731
2023, (with René van den Brink, Gerard van der Laan, and Valeri Vasil’ev) Political Power on a Line Graph, Advances in Collective Decision Making: Interdisciplinary Perspectives for the 21st Century, edited by Sascha Kurz, Nicola Maaser, and Alexander Mayer, 259–286 (Book series Studies in Choice and Welfare, edited by Marc Fleurbaey and Maurice Salles)
2022, Review of Daniel Halliday’s The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 19 (2): 197–200
I have also edited or co-edited two symposia for the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics: (1) a 2020 book symposium, co-edited with Akshath Jitendranath, on John E. Roemer’s How We Cooperate: A Theory of Kantian Optimization, and (2) a 2021 article symposium on Partha Dasgupta and Sanjeev Goyal’s ‘Narrow Identities’. As part of the 2020 book symposium, Akshath and I conducted an interview called ‘What Egalitarianism Requires: An Interview with John E. Roemer’.
(with René van den Brink) The Power of Abstention Abstract: We consider two decision-making models on strict hierarchies: a binary (‘yes’/‘no’) model and a ternary extension that, additionally, allows for abstention. Our interest is in comparing the voting power of the agents in a hierarchical organisation across these two models. In order to do that, we define and axiomatise two voting power measures on strict hierarchies inspired by the Penrose-Banzhaf measure and corresponding to the two models. Our conclusion is that allowing for the possibility to not commit to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision, and to instead delegate this decision to another agent, is empowering. What is more, the larger an organisation is, the more empowering this possibility is: as a hierarchical organisation expands, the possibility of abstention empowers subordinate agents in an exponential way.
(with René van den Brink) Merge and Transfer Invariance of Core Stable Power Indices for Political Power Line Graph Situations Abstract: We consider transfer and merge invariance properties in the measurement of political power in majority voting situations where the political parties/players are ordered linearly. This order may be based on, for example, ideology or political preferences over economic policy, ethical principles, environmental issues, and so on. A transfer refers to some members/seats of one party moving to one of its neighbouring parties. A merge refers to two neighbouring parties merging into one party with its set of members being the union of the sets of members of the two separate parties, and thus the number of seats being the sum of the number of seats of the two original parties. In both cases, invariance refers to this transfer, respectively merge, having no effect on the power of the other parties. We show that the unique transfer invariant, unanimous, Core stable power index is the hierarchical index (based on the hierarchical outcomes of Demange (2002)), while the unique merge invariant, unanimous, Core stable power index is the \(\tau\)-index (based on the \(\tau\)-value of Tijs (1981)).
Stable Hierarchical Change
An Impossibility Result for Centralised Regime Change
(with Roland Luttens) Claims Problems and Cooperative Games: A Probabilistic Generalisation
(with Ben Ferguson and Sebastian Köhler) In Defence of Moral Continence
(with Stefano Merlo) Espitemic Sources of Republican Domination
(with Akshath Jitendranath) Rationality, Deliberation, and Types of Hard Choices; Ranking Hard Choices