SOCIAL CHOICE AND THE ARROW CONDITIONS

Allan F. Gibbard

Economics and Philosophy, 2014, vol. 30, issue 3, 269-284

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.

Date: 2014
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