Connecting and resolving Sen's and Arrow's theorems

Donald G. Saari
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Donald G. Saari: Department of Mathematics, Northwestern University, 2033 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208-2730, USA

Social Choice and Welfare, 1998, vol. 15, issue 2, 239-261

Abstract: It is shown that the source of Sen's and Arrow's impossibility theorems is that Sen's Liberal condition and Arrow's IIA counter the critical assumption that voters have transitive preferences. But if the procedures are not permitted to treat the transitivity of individual preferences as a valued input, then we cannot expect rational outputs. Once this common cause for these perplexing conclusions is understood, these classical conclusions end up admitting quite benign interpretations where it becomes possible to propose several resolutions.

Date: 1998-02-27
Note: Received: 2 April 1996 / Accepted: 15 October 1996
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