Social Choice and Individual Values

Arrow, K. J. (1951). Social Choice and Individual Values. Wiley.

Type

Book

Intellectual base

Textbook

Year

1951

Link

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1nqb90

Cited from

behavioral_economics, economics_finance, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, statistics_experimental_design

Cited by

16 citations across 16 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Aggregation
  • The formal examples below illustrate aggregation as a function φ that maps a multiset to a summary, with loss by design rather than by accident; Arrow's (1951) impossibility theorem, in particular, exposes that no preference-aggregation function can simultaneously satisfy a small set of plausible normative constraints.

    This sourceContains the impossibility theorem: no preference-aggregation rule can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, IIA, and non-dictatorship.

• Axiomatic Incompatibility
  • In social choice, Arrow's theorem shows that unrestricted domain, Pareto, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship are jointly unsatisfiable for any aggregation rule over three or more alternatives; Gibbard-Satterthwaite shows no non-dictatorial ordinal voting rule is strategy-proof.

    This sourceProves the impossibility theorem: no social welfare function over three or more alternatives satisfies unrestricted domain, Pareto, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship simultaneously.

• Balance
  • … problems.** Western balance (Aristotle, Stoics, Montesquieu) emphasizes the mean as a golden balance achieved through reason and virtue; Eastern balance (Confucian Zhongyong, Buddhist madhyamā pratipad, Taoist yin-yang) emphasizes dynamic harmony, relational balance, and the interpenetration of opposites.
• Commensurability
  • Commensurability concerns whether included values can be compared and aggregated into a single measure, an axiomatic distinction Arrow (1951) makes precise in social choice theory by separating the requirement that a preference relation cover all alternatives from the requirement that it order them on a single scale.

    This sourceContains the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship.

• Indifference Curves
  • Not without aggregation problems: a representative consumer's indifference map cannot in general be derived from individual indifference maps unless restrictive conditions hold (Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem); Arrow (1951)

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Invariance
  • In statistics and decision theory, invariance axioms organize entire frameworks: Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Linear Combination
  • In voting and social choice it is weighted voting, Borda counts, and score voting.

    This sourceFoundational treatment of voting and aggregation rules in social choice, including weighted and positional methods.

• Marginal Utility
  • Arrow's impossibility theorem (1951)

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Order
  • established structural limits on the aggregation of individual orderings into collective orderings

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Pareto Efficiency
  • Cross-DP B3 candidates: pareto-1906 appears as foundational anchor for this prime and will be cited in pareto_effect_80_20_rule (DP-08 G1) and marginal_analysis (DP-08 G1); flag as within-G1 consolidation candidate at B3. arrow-1951 (Social Choice and Individual Values)

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Preference
  • An ordering aggregated across many evaluators raises the social-choice problem and Arrow's (1951) impossibility theorem — a structural sub-case where the aggregation operation itself faces constraints.

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Preference Heterogeneity and Conflict
  • Preference heterogeneity and conflict is the structural condition where different agents in a system hold substantively incompatible preferences, goals, or values that cannot simultaneously be fully satisfied, creating decision impasses or outcomes in which all agents experience partial dissatisfaction, a condition Arrow (1951) established as foundational to social choice theory.

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

• Social Choice
  • The defining commitment is a three-part split: a preference space in which each agent has an ordering over a common set of alternatives, an aggregation rule mapping the tuple of individual preferences to a single collective outcome — a winner, a ranking, an allocation — and a property set (Pareto, anonymity, neutrality, independence of irrelevant alternatives, strategyproofness, monotonicity) that the designer wants the rule to satisfy.

    This sourceFounds modern social-choice theory and proves the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule for three or more alternatives simultaneously satisfies unrestricted domain, Pareto, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship.

• Trade-offs
  • - T5: Commensurability and Scalarization
• Value Commensuration
  • Different commensuration frameworks (money, utility, welfare, QALYs, impact points, composite indices) produce different rank-orderings of options and different implied priorities, a result formalized by Arrow's (1951) impossibility theorem, which proved that no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy a small set of seemingly innocuous criteria—so the choice of aggregation metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

    This sourceFoundational social-choice text containing the impossibility theorem: no aggregation rule over heterogeneous individual preferences can simultaneously satisfy unrestricted domain, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship—so any commensuration metric inevitably privileges some values over others.

Mechanisms

• Ranked-Choice or Approval Voting Rule
  • The rule choice, not the ballots alone, shapes which winner emerges.

    This sourceFormalizes collective choice as a rule that maps individual preference orderings into a social ordering and selected alternative.

Verification

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Links previously used in the corpus

Before the registry existed this work was also linked 4 other ways.

• https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2022-09/m12-all.pdf ×1
• https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/mon/m12-all.pdf ×1
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Choice_and_Individual_Values ×1
• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Social_Choice_and_Individual_Values/Ai5JAAAAIAAJ ×1

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