Preeminence and sustainability in bankruptcy problems

Résumé

This paper focuses on two new properties for bankruptcy rules: preeminence and sustainability. They pertain to situations when the claims of some agents are much larger than the claims of other agents. They differ in the way the recommend agents with small claims to be treated. Preeminence requires that the agents with very small claims should no be allotted anything. Sustainability takes the opposite side: claims small enough should be fully honored. Our main results are that the equal treatment of equals, composition and preeminence, and that the constrained equal-award rule is the only rule that satisfies equal treatment of equals, path independence and sustainability.