Pexider's equation and aggregation of allocations (Q579540)

The Cauchy functional equation \(f(x+y)=f(x)+f(y)\) can be uniquely extended to the whole plane from the positive quarter plane or from a neighborhood of 0 but not from any connected open set, from these only quasi-extensions exist [the reviewer, \textit{P. Erdős}, Publ. Math. 12, 259--263 (1965; Zbl 0151.21001), \textit{Z. Daróczy} and \textit{L. Losonczi}, Über die Erweiterung der auf einer Punktmenge additiven Funktionen, ibid. 14, 239--245 (1967; Zbl 0175.15305)]. Formulating exactly and generalizing earlier results [\textit{J. Rimán}, Rec. Trav. Inst. Math., Nouv. Sér., No. 1(9), 65--72 (1976; Zbl 0342.39006); the reviewer, Remark 28, Aequationes Math. 29, 101 (1985)] the authors show that a unique extension of the Pexider equation \(f(x+y)=g(x)+h(y)\) from a connected open set exists even on Cartesian squares of real or complex linear topological spaces (with the values of f,g,h in abelian groups). The result is used to generalize aggregation theorems of the reviewer, \textit{C. T. Ng} and \textit{C. Wagner} [SIAM J. Algebraic Discrete Methods 5, 1--8 (1984; Zbl 0538.05006)] on allocation problems by permitting additional constraining linear equations and inequalities as an alternative to Pareto optimization in multiobjective linear programming. -- They give several examples and counterexamples.