#kenneth arrow

[edrudiger]

Quote for the Day

American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist, Kenneth Arrow wrote, “Any purchase is one for the future. If you buy a refrigerator, you are making a commitment to the future so that you have food to eat for the next ten years.”

[room-where-it-happens]

Kenneth Arrow, Nobel-Winning Economist Whose Influence Spanned Decades, Dies at 95

Professor Arrow, one of the most brilliant minds in his field during the 20th century, became the youngest economist ever to earn a Nobel at the age of 51.

[room-where-it-happens]

Kenneth Arrow, one of the greats of social science, died today at the age of 95.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arrow

[isomorphismes]

Many voting paradoxes (e.g. Arrow’s theorem) ultimately stem from the fact that there is no deterministic way to map [0,1] to {0,1} in any “homomorphic” manner, but this becomes possible once some randomness is permitted.

Terry Tao

[leninsbody]

Opinion: How Majority Rule Might Have Stopped Donald Trump

Opinion: How Majority Rule Might Have Stopped Donald Trump

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Under the plurality system used in American primaries and general elections, a real majority winner can be — and has been — defeated. Think, for instance, of George W. Bush, Al Gore and Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000, when Mr. Nader’s candidacy drew votes that may well have decided the balance in an excruciatingly close vote. Also, a plurality winner could well be defeated by each of…

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[socialstudiesmidway-blog]

Opinion: How Majority Rule Might Have Stopped Donald Trump

Opinion: How Majority Rule Might Have Stopped Donald Trump

[ad_1] Under the plurality system used in American primaries and general elections, a real majority winner can be — and has been — defeated. Think, for instance, of George W. Bush, Al Gore and Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000, when Mr. Nader’s candidacy drew votes that may well have decided the balance in an excruciatingly close vote. Also, a plurality winner could well be defeated by each of…

View On WordPress

[anti-hegemon]

How undemocratic decision-making exists within a democratic world

Arrow’s Theorem Proves No Voting System is Perfect

One of the central issues in the theory of voting is described by Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, which states roughly that no reasonably consistent and fair voting system can result in sensible results.

Named after Nobel Prize-winning economist Kenneth Arrow, the theorem starts by establishing a set of reasonable conditions on voting -- that is, on the method of aggregating individuals’ preferences into group preferences.

These conditions can lead to nonsensical group decisions, or manifestly undemocratic decision-making. As political scientists Ken Shepsle and Mark Bonchek put it in their book, Analyzing Politics, “The group is either dominated by a single distinguished member or has intransitive preferences.” For this reason, the theorem is sometimes known as the “dictator theorem.”

Understanding Arrow’s Theorem starts with understanding what economists and political scientists mean by “intransitive preferences.”

Preferences are known as “transitive” if they can be put in a sensible order. For instance, if you like apples best, then oranges, then bananas least, that means you prefer apples to oranges and to bananas, and oranges to bananas. If instead your fruit preferences cannot be put in best-to-least order -- you prefer apples to oranges and oranges to bananas, but prefer bananas to apples -- your preferences are known as “cyclic” or “intransitive.”

Arrow was trying to create a voting system that was consistent, fair, and would lead to transitive group preferences over more than two options. But in trying to create such a voting system, he proved that this was impossible ...(continued)

[economicreading-blog]

Whatever the source of the concept, the notion that through the workings of an entire system effects may be very different from, and even opposed to, intentions is surely the most important intellectual contribution that economic thought has made to the general understanding of social processes.

Kenneth Arrow | 1968 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences essay, “Economic Equilibrium“