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Intransitive social indifference and the Arrow dilemma

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  • Allan Gibbard

Abstract

This paper deals with a proposal by Frederic Schick for resolving Arrow’s dilemma of social choice. Schick challenges Arrow’s assumption that rational social indifference is transitive. It turns out, however, that even if we drop this assumption, we still face a dilemma as embarrassing as Arrow’s. Any constitution which satisfies the remaining conditions is a liberum veto oligarchy. This means a unique set of individuals carries any issue on which it is unanimous, and engenders social indifference on any issue which divides it. A formal statement and proof of this theorem follows an informal presentation of the result. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Allan Gibbard, 2014. "Intransitive social indifference and the Arrow dilemma," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 18(1), pages 3-10, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:reecde:v:18:y:2014:i:1:p:3-10
    DOI: 10.1007/s10058-014-0158-1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gibbard, Allan F., 2014. "Social Choice And The Arrow Conditions," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 269-284, November.
    2. Amartya Sen, 1969. "Quasi-Transitivity, Rational Choice and Collective Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 36(3), pages 381-393.
    3. Weymark, John A., 2014. "An Introduction To Allan Gibbard’S Harvard Seminar Paper," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 263-268, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Duddy, Conal & Piggins, Ashley, 2022. "Collective choice rules with social maximality," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    2. Wesley H. Holliday & Eric Pacuit, 2020. "Arrow’s decisive coalitions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 463-505, March.
    3. Piggins, Ashley & Duddy, Conal, 2016. "Oligarchy and soft incompleteness," MPRA Paper 72392, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Conal Duddy & Ashley Piggins, 2018. "On some oligarchy results when social preference is fuzzy," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(4), pages 717-735, December.
    5. Duddy, Conal & Piggins, Ashley, 2020. "A foundation for Pareto optimality," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 25-30.
    6. Piggins, Ashley, 2017. "Sen’s proofs of the Arrow and Gibbard theorems," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 99-101.
    7. Ataei, Masoud & Chen, Shengyuan & Yang, Zijiang & Peyghami, M. Reza, 2021. "Theory and applications of financial chaos index," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 580(C).
    8. Juan C. Candeal, 2023. "Social evaluation functionals with an arbitrary set of alternatives," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 95(2), pages 255-271, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Arrow’s theorem; Oligarchy; Quasitransitivity; D71;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

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