Applications of preference trees

A binary tree model, called a preference tree, is used to structure preferences. Two applications are discussed. First, ordinal preferences over outcomes in a multiple participant problem often are lexicographic over action elements. This permits a decomposition of the preferences into importance and desirability which can then be modelled using preference trees. Second, a multiple criteria problem can often be characterized in terms of threshold statements concerning the desirability of criteria. These statements are also often lexicographic, and this permits the preferences over alternatives to be represented as a preference tree. Preference trees provide significant efficiencies in notation and computation