Negli anni novanta si è diffusa nelle scienze sociali l’idea che la crescita non sia determinata soltanto da fattori di carattere economico, quali il capitale naturale, il capitale fisico e il capitale umano, ma anche dal tessuto sociale e istituzionale dell’economia. Gli aspetti della...

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...

We characterize a rule in cost spanning tree problems using an additivity property and some basic properties. If the set of possible agents has at least three agents, these basic properties are symmetry and separability. If the set of possible agents has two agents, we must add positivity. In...

The decisions made during the design process have a critical impact both on the design solution obtained but also on the design process itself. It can be observed that while the way in which products are developed differs not only across firms but within the same firm over time, what is being...

Most properties of binary relations considered in the decision literature can be expressed as the impossibility of certain ``configurations.'' There exists no condition of this form which would hold for a binary relation on a subset of a finite-dimensional Euclidean space if and only if the...

We examine how globalization affects trade patterns and welfare when conflict prevails domestically. We do so in a simple model of trade, in which a natural resource like oil is contested by competing groups using real resources ('guns'). Thus, conflict is viewed as ultimately stemming from...

All existing impossibility theorems on judgment aggregation over logically connected propositions have one of two restrictions: they either use a controversial systematicity condition or apply only to special agendas of propositions with rich logical connections. An important open question is...

It is known that majority voting among several individuals on logically interconnected propositions may generate irrational collective judgments. We generalize majority voting by considering quota rules, which accept each proposition if and only if the number of individuals accepting it exceeds...

In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means of direct coordination or the enforcement of pre-commitment devices such as contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In a local interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with...

If each member of a group assigns a certain probability to a hypothesis, what probability should the collective as a whole assign? More generally, how should individual probability functions be merged into a single collective one? I investigate this question in case that the individual...