Foundations of Social Choice Theory

Foundations of Social Choice Theory
Author: Jon Elster (red.)
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1986
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521389136

First published in 1986, this volume of essays offers an examination of the philosophical foundations of social choice theory, in its context as the outgrowth of welfare economics. The essays advance both criticisms and suggestions for alternative approaches.

Condorcet

Condorcet
Author: Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat marquis de Condorcet
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781781008119

The Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94) was a founding father of social science. He believed that what he called the moral sciences could be studied by the same exacting methods as the natural sciences, and he developed many of the tools for doing so. Condorcet has had two quite unconnected reputations: as the doomed and foolish Enlightenment scholar, writing about the perfectibility of mankind while in hiding from the Terror that would shortly claim his own life; and as the incomprehensible founder of social choice, whose Essai of 1785 was not understood until the 1950s. This book shows that he was not so foolish, nor so incomprehensible, as even sympathetic treatments have made him sound.

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem
Author: Eric Maskin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231153287

Kenneth Arrow's pathbreaking Òimpossibility theoremÓ was a watershed in the history of welfare economics, voting theory, and collective choice, demonstrating that there is no voting rule that satisfies the four desirable axioms of decisiveness, consensus, nondictatorship, and independence. In this book, Amartya Sen and Eric Maskin explore the implications of ArrowÕs theorem. Sen considers its ongoing utility, exploring the theoremÕs value and limitations in relation to recent research on social reasoning, while Maskin discusses how to design a voting rule that gets us closer to the idealÑgiven that achieving the ideal is impossible. The volume also contains a contextual introduction by social choice scholar Prasanta K. Pattanaik and commentaries from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth Arrow himself, as well as essays by Sen and Maskin outlining the mathematical proof and framework behind their assertions.

Choice, Preferences, and Procedures

Choice, Preferences, and Procedures
Author: Kotaro Suzumura
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 806
Release: 2016-06-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674727444

Kotaro Suzumura is one of the world’s foremost thinkers in social choice theory and welfare economics. Bringing together essays that have become classics in the field, Choice, Preferences, and Procedures examines foundational issues of normative economics and collective decision making. Social choice theory seeks to critically assess and rationally design economic mechanisms for improving human life. An important part of Suzumura’s contribution over the past forty years has entailed fusion of abstract microeconomic ideas with an understanding of real-world economies in a coherent analysis. This volume of selected essays reveals the evolution of Suzumura’s thinking over his career. Groundbreaking papers explore the nature of individual and social choice and the idea of assigning value to freedom of choice, different forms of rationality, and concepts of individual rights, equity, and fairness. Suzumura elucidates his innovative approach for recognizing interpersonal comparisons in the vein of Adam Smith’s notion of sympathy and expounds the effect of paying due attention to nonconsequential features, such as the opportunity to choose and the procedure for decision making, along with the standard consequential features. Analyzing the role of economic competition, Suzumura points out how restricting competition may, in some circumstances, improve social welfare. This is not to recommend government regulation rather than market competition but to emphasize the importance of procedural features in a competitive context. He concludes with illuminating essays on the history of economic thought, focusing on the ideas of Vilfredo Pareto, Arthur Pigou, John Hicks, and Paul Samuelson.

Behavioral Social Choice

Behavioral Social Choice
Author: Michel Regenwetter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 21
Release: 2006-05-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0521829682

Behavioral Social Choice looks at the probabilistic foundations of collective decision-making rules. The authors challenge much of the existing theoretical wisdom about social choice processes, and seek to restore faith in the possibility of democratic decision-making. In particular, they argue that worries about the supposed prevalence of majority rule cycles that would preclude groups from reaching a final decision about what alternative they prefer have been greatly overstated. In practice, majority rule can be expected to work well in most real-world settings. They provide new insights into how alternative model specifications can change our estimates of social orderings.

Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory

Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory
Author: Allan M. Feldman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2006-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 038729368X

This book covers the main topics of welfare economics — general equilibrium models of exchange and production, Pareto optimality, un certainty, externalities and public goods — and some of the major topics of social choice theory — compensation criteria, fairness, voting. Arrow's Theorem, and the theory of implementation. The underlying question is this: "Is a particular economic or voting mechanism good or bad for society?" Welfare economics is mainly about whether the market mechanism is good or bad; social choice is largely about whether voting mechanisms, or other more abstract mechanisms, can improve upon the results of the market. This second edition updates the material of the first, written by Allan Feldman. It incorporates new sections to existing first-edition chapters, and it includes several new ones. Chapters 4, 6, 11, 15 and 16 are new, added in this edition. The first edition of the book grew out of an undergraduate welfare economics course at Brown University. The book is intended for the undergraduate student who has some prior familiarity with microeconomics. However, the book is also useful for graduate students and professionals, economists and non-economists, who want an overview of welfare and social choice results unburdened by detail and mathematical complexity. Welfare economics and social choice both probably suffer from ex cessively technical treatments in professional journals and monographs.

Social Choice and Legitimacy

Social Choice and Legitimacy
Author: John W. Patty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2014-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139915487

Governing requires choices, and hence trade-offs between conflicting goals or criteria. This book asserts that legitimate governance requires explanations for such trade-offs and then demonstrates that such explanations can always be found, though not for every possible choice. In so doing, John W. Patty and Elizabeth Maggie Penn use the tools of social choice theory to provide a new and discriminating theory of legitimacy. In contrast with both earlier critics and defenders of social choice theory, Patty and Penn argue that the classic impossibility theorems of Arrow, Gibbard, and Satterthwaite are inescapably relevant to, and indeed justify, democratic institutions. Specifically, these institutions exist to do more than simply make policy - through their procedures and proceedings, these institutions make sense of the trade-offs required when controversial policy decisions must be made.

Empirical Social Choice

Empirical Social Choice
Author: Wulf Gaertner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107013941

The first self-contained analysis of the use of questionnaire data to test theories of distributive justice.

The Limits of Rationality

The Limits of Rationality
Author: Karen Schweers Cook
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2008-10-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226742415

Prevailing economic theory presumes that agents act rationally when they make decisions, striving to maximize the efficient use of their resources. Psychology has repeatedly challenged the rational choice paradigm with persuasive evidence that people do not always make the optimal choice. Yet the paradigm has proven so successful a predictor that its use continues to flourish, fueled by debate across the social sciences over why it works so well. Intended to introduce novices to rational choice theory, this accessible, interdisciplinary book collects writings by leading researchers. The Limits of Rationality illuminates the rational choice paradigm of social and political behavior itself, identifies its limitations, clarifies the nature of current controversies, and offers suggestions for improving current models. In the first section of the book, contributors consider the theoretical foundations of rational choice. Models of rational choice play an important role in providing a standard of human action and the bases for constitutional design, but do they also succeed as explanatory models of behavior? Do empirical failures of these explanatory models constitute a telling condemnation of rational choice theory or do they open new avenues of investigation and theorizing? Emphasizing analyses of norms and institutions, the second and third sections of the book investigate areas in which rational choice theory might be extended in order to provide better models. The contributors evaluate the adequacy of analyses based on neoclassical economics, the potential contributions of game theory and cognitive science, and the consequences for the basic framework when unequal bargaining power and hierarchy are introduced.