Collective Preference and Choice

by Shmuel Nitzan

Overview

Collective decision-making is a familiar feature of our social, political, and economic lives. It ranges from the relatively trivial (e.g. the choice of the next family car) to the globally significant (e.g. whether or not a country should go to war). Yet, whether trivial or globally significant, such decisions involve a number of challenging problems. These problems arise in the standard social choice setting, where individuals differ in their preferences. They also arise in the standard decision-making setting, where individuals share the same preferences, but differ in their decisional capabilities. The distinctive feature of Collective Preference and Choice is that it looks at classical aggregation problems that arise in three closely related areas: social choice theory, voting theory, and group decision-making under uncertainty. Using a series of exercises and examples, the book explains these problems with reference to a number of important contributions to the study of collective decision-making.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521897259
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/10/2009
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Shmuel Nitzan is Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor of Economics at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is the author (with Jacob Paroush) of Collective Decision Making (1986) and (with Gil Epstein) of Endogenous Public Policy and Contests (2007). His research focuses on political economy, social choice, collective decision-making, public economics, and voting theory.

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I. Introduction: 1. The reason for the problems; 2. Brief overview of the problems; 3. The relationship between preferences and choice; Part II. Different Preferences: 4. Do social preferences exist? Arrow's and Sen's impossibility theorems; 5. The desirable collective decision rule: axiomatization; 6. Rule selection based on the compromise with the unanimity criterion; 7. Paradoxes of voting; 8. Majority tyranny and expression of preference intensity; 9. The problem of inefficient provision of public goods; 10. Do individuals reveal their true preferences?; Part III. Identical Preferences – Different Decisional Skills: 11. Which rule is better: the expert rule or the simple majority rule? Decisional errors in dichotomous choice and Condorcet's jury theorem; 12. The optimal decision rule under uncertain dichotomous choice; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'This is a first rate book, covering basic social choice theory (Arrow, Sen, Condorcet, Borda, etc.), as well as group choice when individuals seek the same objective but disagree on how to bring it about - an area in which Shmuel Nitzan himself has made seminal contributions. The material is well presented. This lucid treatment is ideal for newcomers to the field, but it will also be a valuable resource for graduate students. For every page of text there is half a page of exercises with solutions.' Donald Campbell, College of William and Mary

'Written by one of the major contributors to the field, this book is an excellent introduction to social choice. Covering the basic questions of the definition and elicitation of social choice, the book will be a great resource for students of economics and political science, as well as for researchers in social science, computer science, and related fields.' Itzhak Gilboa, Tel Aviv University and HEC, Paris

'Shmuel Nitzan is well-known to all scholars and students of social choice theory for his important articles published in leading outlets of the profession. His new book incorporates and expands upon those contributions in a very accessible manner. It contains much material not found in other textbooks in the field. Professor Nitzan's long experience as a teacher is pleasantly visible from the very beginning of the text. Each chapter is succinctly and competently summarized. A very nice instructional touch is added to the book by solved exercises at the end of each chapter. This makes the book most useful not only in the classroom, but also in independent study.' Hannu Nurmi, University of Turku

From the Publisher