General Pareto Optimal Allocations and Applications to Multi-period Risks

In this paper, we consider the problem of Pareto optimal allocation in a general framework, involving preference functionals defined on a general real vector space. The optimization problem is equivalent to a modified sup-convolution of the different agents’ preference functionals. The results are then applied to a multi-period setting and some further characterization of Pareto optimality for an allocation is obtained for expected utility for processes.

Keywords: Pareto optimality, contract design, preference functional, multi-period risks.