The heart and the uncovered set (Q4938542)

The heart of a preference \(p\) in a space \(W\) is the set \({\mathcal H}(p)\) of points which are not locally covered, that is, there is no covering in any neighborhood of \(p\). The uncovered set \(\overline E(p)\) of a preference is the set of points that do not have a covering. The uncovered set is, of course, a subset of the heart. Given a proper voting rule \(D\) there are natural extensions of these sets induced on the collection of subsets of the space, denoted \({\mathcal H}_D(p)\) and \(\overline E_D(p)\). The two main theorems are that the heart \({\mathcal H}_D(p)\) is non-empty for any compact topological space \(W\), proper voting rule and lower demicontinuous preference \(p\) on \(W\) (Theorem 1) and that if \(W\) is a smooth Fan space, there is an open set on which the heart-map \(\mathcal H_D\) from the space of profiles is lower hemicontinuous and admits a selection (Theorem 2). The space of profiles is here given a \(C^1\)-topology. The technical topological details are given in a series of appendices. The heart is a local concept. In contrast to the uncovered set, introduced for modeling two-player games, the heart is intended to be used for analyzing voting in committees or other multi-agent situations, where the voting procedure may be to consider minor, or local, modifications to particular proposals. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0922.00033].