Fachartikel
How to sell power Indices

How to sell power Indices

There is no obvious answer to the question “which is the best power measure”. This paper suggests that we can develop “sales arguments” for power indices by looking at the history of the concepts of social welfare and equilibrium notions in game theory. For instance, there is no unambiguous definition of social welfare and we tend to be content with a blatant tautology: social welfare is what social welfare functions measure. This paper will also discuss the dominance of the Nash equilibrium concept in game theory. Although the Nash equilibrium is a questionable behavioural description for many game situations and often leads to inconclusive results, the large majority of game theorists agree that a game outcome has to concur with a Nash equilibrium. Why does such a wide consensus not exist for power indices?