Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem shows that transitive social preference is impossible. This note shows that in the general case of exchange, social preference need not be transitive. Indeed, it shows that social preference must be non-transitive to allow gainful exchange to maximize social...

In this paper we are interested in the social choice theory of allocating resources, which are available and can be consumed in integer units only. Since goods are available in integer units only, the social choice theory for such problems cannot exploit any smoothness property, which may...

Prevailing trade theory is a neglected stepchild of economics. Micro rejects the sole reason for trade’s occurrence. It declares zero profit in equilibrium. Monetary theory and macroeconomics dismiss concerns of trade financing. They assert that money has nothing to do with traded output, but...

A merging function synthesizes a vector of numbers (representing measurements, scores or quantitative opinions) into a single number (representing a consensus or collective measurement, score or quantitative opinion). Assuming that all the involved numbers are drawn from a discrete set, it is...

We study a class of voting rules that bridge between majoritarianism and liberalism. An outcome of the vote specifies who among the voters are eligible to a certain right or qualification. Each outcome serves also as a permissible ballot. We characterize axiomatically a family of rules...

We study option management by committee. Analysis is illustrated by tenure decisions. Our innovations are two-fold: we treat the committee's problem as one of social choice, not of information aggregation; and we endogenise the outside option: rejecting a candidate at either the probationary or...