Economics and CPS Seminar mini-course: Arrow Impossibility Theorem

March 13, 2015
Arrow Impossibility Theorem

The first lecture presented by Dr. Galina Schwartz introduces individual and social preferences, formulates (and proves) a major result from social choice theory, so called Arrow Impossibility Theorem, and discusses a couple of related results: Condorcet's paradox and Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. Dr. Schwartz outlines the reasons why familiarity with these results will be useful in dealing with various CPS problems, such as mechanism design and contractual design, uncovering user preferences, etc.

Papers for Lecture 1:

1. Arrow K.J.: Social Choice and Individual Values. Wiley, NewYork (1951)
2. P.C. Fishburn. Arrow's impossibility theorem: Concise proof and infinite voters. Journal of Economic Theory, 2 (1) (1970), pp. 103-106.
3. Geanakoplos J.: Three brief proofs of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Econ Theory 26(1), 211-215 (2005)