This paper distinguishes an index ordering and a social ordering function as a simple way to formalize the indexing problem in the social choice framework. Two main conclusions are derived. First, the alleged dilemma between welfarism and perfectionnism is shown to involve a third possibility,...

It has become accepted that social choice is impossible in absence of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. This view is challenged here. Arrow obtained an impossibility theorem only by making unreasonable demands on social choice functions. With reasonable requirements, one can get very...

This article recalls the ambitions and theoretical issues that led Sen to develop a new conception of individual advantage and social evaluation. This Capability Approach (CA) is often regarded as moral philosophy. However, it arose from the work of a social choice theorist, whose eclecticism...

There is a widespread concern that a greater mobility of individuals can undermine any attempt to redistribute income at the local level. In this paper we derive the equilibrium level of redistribution when both the rich and the poor are mobile (although in different degrees) and when each...

Corruption, evasion and the abuse of power (and the possibility thereof) are pervasive features of economic activity. A prominent instance is tax collection. This paper examines the implications of corruptibility and the potential abuse of authority for the effects and optimal design of...

Judgment (or logical) aggregation theory is logically more powerful than social choice theory and has been put to use to recover some classic results of this field. Whether it could also enrich it with genuinely new results is still controversial. To support a positive answer, the authors prove...

The authors provide possibility results on the aggregation of beliefs and tastes for Monotone, Bernoullian and Archimedian preferences of Cerreia-Vioglio, Ghirardato, Maccheroni, Marinacci, and Siniscalchi (2011). The authors propose a new axiom, Unambiguous Pareto Dominance, which requires that...

The nexus between income and happiness is very much disputed. Many cross-sectional studies seem to be in support of a positive relationship. Yet, the failure of most studies to find a similar link between increases in income through time and happiness in developed countries of the western...

Intransitive, incomplete and discontinuous preferences are not always irrational, but may be based on quite reasonable considerations. Hence, we pursue the possibility to build a theory of social choice on an alternative foundation, viz. on individual reference tournaments. Tournaments have been...

This study addresses the issue of intergenerational transmission of democratic values embedded in social choice rules. We focus on a few rules which have been the focus of social choice theory: plurality, plurality with a runoff, majoritarian compromise, social compromise and Borda rule. We...