A unifying impossibility theorem

Priscilla Man and Shino Takayama ()

Economic Theory, 2013, vol. 54, issue 2, 249-271

Abstract: This paper identifies and illuminates a common impossibility principle underlying a number of impossibility theorems in social choice. We consider social choice correspondences assigning a choice set to each non-empty subset of social alternatives. Three simple axioms are imposed as follows: unanimity, independence of preferences over infeasible alternatives, and choice consistency with respect to choices out of all possible alternatives. With more than three social alternatives and the universal preference domain, any social choice correspondence that satisfies our axioms is serially dictatorial. A number of known impossibility theorems—including Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, the Muller–Satterthwaite Theorem, and the impossibility theorem under strategic candidacy—follow as corollaries. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Keywords: Impossibility theorem; Independence of infeasible alternatives; Independence of losing alternatives; Social choice; D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Working Paper: A Unifying Impossibility Theorem (2012)
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DOI: 10.1007/s00199-013-0750-6

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