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Conditions on social choice functions

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Conclusion

It might be tempting to view this paper simply as a compilation and collection of the conditions in the social choice literature and an orderly presentation of the relationships among these conditions. While we think that this alone would make it useful we hope this paper will serve as more than a reference guide, that it will also help systematize research in various areas.

It would be interesting, for example, to take each subgroup of the rationality conditions and determine what impossibility results can be obtained when each of the conditions in the subgroup is substituted for the traditional TR, QTR and AR conditions. It would then be possible to develop an overall picture of the structure and robustness of the impossibility results for each subgroup of conditions and hence for all the rationality conditions.

We would also hope that this paper would stimulate some discussion of the fairness and reasonableness of the conditions presented here. Many of the conditions covered above are, we believe, neither fair nor reasonable. Achievement of some consensus as to what constitute meaningful requirements for a social choice function would help provide a more common direction for social choice research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Analytical Assessments Corp., Marina Del Ray, C.A.

    Jeffrey Richelson (Research Associate)

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  1. Jeffrey Richelson
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Additional information

The author benefited from conservations with Thomas Schwartz, John Frejohn and Charles Plott. Any remaining errors are the responsibility of the author.

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Richelson, J. Conditions on social choice functions. Public Choice 31, 79–110 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01718975

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