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SOCIAL CHOICE AND THE ARROW CONDITIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2014

Allan F. Gibbard
Allan F. Gibbard*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, [email protected]
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Abstract

Arrow’s impossibility result stems chiefly from a combination of two requirements: independence and fixity. Independence says that the social choice is independent of individual preferences involving unavailable alternatives. Fixity says that the social choice is fixed by a social preference relation that is independent of what is available. Arrow found that requiring, further, that this relation be transitive yields impossibility. Here it is shown that allowing intransitive social indifference still permits only a vastly unsatisfactory system, a liberum veto oligarchy. Arrow’s argument for independence, though, undermines any rationale for fixity.

Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 269 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

REFERENCES

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