Domain Conditions in Social Choice Theory
Domain Conditions in Social Choice Theory
Wulf Gaertner provides a comprehensive account of an important and complex issue within social choice theory: how to establish a social welfare function while restricting the spectrum of individual preferences in a sensible way. Gaertner's starting point is K. J. Arrow's famous 'Impossibility Theorem', which showed that no welfare function could exist if an unrestricted domain of preferences is to be satisfied together with some other appealing conditions. A number of leading economists have tried to provide avenues out of this 'impossibility' by restricting the variety of preferences: here, Gaertner provides a clear and detailed account, using standardized mathematical notation, of well over forty theorems associated with domain conditions. Domain Conditions in Social Choice Theory will be an essential addition to the library of social choice theory for scholars and their advanced graduate students.
- A most comprehensive survey of literature, covering over 100 theorems
- Uses standardized mathematical notation
- Work quoted by Amartya Sen in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Reviews & endorsements
"...an interesting and valuable book. It will be an essential addition to the library of social choice theory scholars and their graduate students." Public Choice
"A good source of references..." Mathematical Reviews
Product details
September 2001Hardback
9780521791021
166 pages
216 × 140 × 13 mm
0.36kg
6 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Notation, definitions and two fundamental theorems
- 3. The existence of collective choice rules under exclusion conditions for finite sets of discrete alternatives
- 4. Arrovian social welfare functions, nonmanipulable voting procedures and stable group decision functions
- 5. Restrictions on the distribution of individuals' preferences
- 6. The existence of social choice rules in n-dimensional continuous space
- 7. Concluding remarks
- 8. References
- Indexes.
