Abstract
Social choice theory deals with aggregating individual opinions into social choices. Over the past decades a large number of choice methods have been evaluated in terms of various criteria of performance. We focus on methods that can be viewed as distance minimizing ones in the sense that they can be analyzed in terms of a goal state of consensus and the methods themselves can be seen as minimizing the distance of the observed profile from that consensus. The methods, thus, provide a way of measuring the degree of disagreement prevailing in the profile.
The authors thank an anonymous referee for several constructive comments on an earlier version.
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Meskanen, T., Nurmi, H. (2006). Distance from Consensus: A Theme and Variations. In: Simeone, B., Pukelsheim, F. (eds) Mathematics and Democracy. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-35605-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-35605-3_9
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