IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00246987.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Arrovian aggregation in economic environments: How much should we know about indifference surfaces?

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Fleurbaey

    (CERSES - UMR 8137 - Centre de recherche sens, ethique, société - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Kotaro Suzumura
  • Koichi Tadenuma

Abstract

Arrow's celebrated theorem of social choice shows that the aggregation of individual preferences into a social ordering cannot make the ranking of any pair of alternatives depend only on individual preferences over that pair, unless the fundamental weak Pareto and non-dictatorship principles are violated. In the standard model of division of commodities, we investigate how much information about indifference hypersurfaces is needed to construct social ordering functions satisfying the weak Pareto principle and anonymity. We show that local information such as marginal rates of substitution or the shapes "within the Edgeworth box" is not enough, and knowledge of substantially non-local information is necessary.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Fleurbaey & Kotaro Suzumura & Koichi Tadenuma, 2005. "Arrovian aggregation in economic environments: How much should we know about indifference surfaces?," Post-Print hal-00246987, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00246987
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin W. S. Roberts, 1980. "Interpersonal Comparability and Social Choice Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 421-439.
    2. Graciela Chichilnisky, 1997. "A Unified Perspective on Resource Allocation: Limited Arbitrage is Necessary and Sufficient for the Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium, the Core and Social Choice," International Economic Association Series, in: Kenneth J. Arrow & Amartya Sen & Kotaro Suzumura (ed.), Social Choice Re-examined, chapter 6, pages 121-174, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Claude D'Aspremont & Louis Gevers, 1977. "Equity and the Informational Basis of Collective Choice," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(2), pages 199-209.
    4. Suzumura, Kotaro, 1981. "On pareto-efficiency and the no-envy concept of equity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 367-379, December.
    5. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1950. "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58, pages 328-328.
    6. Tadenuma, Koichi, 2002. "Efficiency First or Equity First? Two Principles and Rationality of Social Choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 462-472, June.
    7. Ehud Kalai & Eitan Muller & Mark Satterthwaite, 1979. "Social welfare functions when preferences are convex, strictly monotonic, and continuous," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 87-97, March.
    8. Elisha A. Pazner & David Schmeidler, 1978. "Egalitarian Equivalent Allocations: A New Concept of Economic Equity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 92(4), pages 671-687.
    9. Suzumura, Kotaro, 1981. "On the Possibility of "Fair" Collective Choice Rule," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 22(2), pages 351-364, June.
    10. Marc Fleurbaey & Maurice Salles & John A. Weymark, 2008. "Justice, Political Liberalism and Utilitarianism," Post-Print hal-00246415, HAL.
    11. Hammond, Peter J, 1976. "Equity, Arrow's Conditions, and Rawls' Difference Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(4), pages 793-804, July.
    12. Dirk Van de gaer & Marc Fleurbaey & Walter Bossert, 1999. "Responsibility, talent, and compensation: A second-best analysis," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 4(1), pages 35-55.
    13. M. Fleurbaey & F. Maniquet, 2008. "Fair social orderings," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(1), pages 25-45, January.
    14. Bordes, Georges & Breton, Michel Le, 1989. "Arrovian theorems with private alternatives domains and selfish individuals," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 257-281, April.
    15. Chichilnisky, Graciela, 1997. "Limited arbitrage is necessary and sufficient for the existence of an equilibrium," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 470-479, November.
    16. M. Fleurbaey & F. Maniquet, 2000. "Fair Social Orderings With Unequal Production Skills," THEMA Working Papers 2000-17, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gevers, Louis, 2002. "Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 459-541, Elsevier.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey & Koichi Tadenuma, 2007. "Do Irrelevant Commodities Matter?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1143-1174, July.
    3. Giacomo, VALETTA, 2007. "A fair solution to the compensation problem," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2007038, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques.
    4. Marc Fleurbaey, 2006. "To Envy or to be Envied? Refinements of No-Envy fot the Compensation Problem," IDEP Working Papers 0603, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France, revised Jul 2006.
    5. Jean-François Laslier, 2004. "Strategic approval voting in a large electorate," IDEP Working Papers 0405, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France.
    6. Fleurbaey, Marc, 2007. "Two criteria for social decisions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 421-447, May.
    7. Thomson, William, 2011. "Chapter Twenty-One - Fair Allocation Rules," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 21, pages 393-506, Elsevier.
    8. Georges Bordes & Peter J. Hammond & Michel Le Breton, 2005. "Social Welfare Functionals on Restricted Domains and in Economic Environments," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 7(1), pages 1-25, February.
    9. Marc Fleurbaey, 2005. "The Pazner-Schmeidler social ordering: A defense," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 9(2), pages 145-166, April.
    10. Houy, Nicolas & Tadenuma, Koichi, 2009. "Lexicographic compositions of multiple criteria for decision making," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1770-1782, July.
    11. Marc Fleurbaey, 2003. "Social Welfare, Priority to the Worst-Off And the Dimensions of Individual Well-Being," IDEP Working Papers 0312, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France.
    12. Yukihiro Nishimura, 2008. "Envy Minimization In The Optimal Tax Context," Working Paper 1178, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    13. Maniquet, Francois & Sprumont, Yves, 2005. "Welfare egalitarianism in non-rival environments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 155-174, February.
    14. Maniquet, François, 2008. "Social orderings for the assignment of indivisible objects," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 199-215, November.
    15. Marc Fleurbaey & François Maniquet, 2006. "Fair Income Tax," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 55-83.
    16. Kotaro Suzumura, 2002. "Introduction to social choice and welfare," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 442, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    17. Sakamoto, Norihito, 2018. "Equity Criteria Based on the Dominance Principle and Individual Preferences: Refinements of the Consensus Approach," RCNE Discussion Paper Series 5, Research Center for Normative Economics, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    18. Weymark, John A., 1998. "Welfarism on economic domains1," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 251-268, December.
    19. Marc Fleurbaey & Philippe Mongin, 2005. "The news of the death of welfare economics is greatly exaggerated," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 25(2), pages 381-418, December.
    20. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter, 2004. "Interpersonal comparisons of well-being," Economic Research Papers 269605, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social choice; independence of irrelevant alternatives;

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00246987. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.