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Instructors: Prof. Dr. Salvatore Barbaro
Event type:
Lecture
Displayed in timetable as:
03.184.4170
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | -
Requirements / organisational issues:
The pivotal prerequisite is an open-mindedness to interdisciplinary approaches. The module consists of a lecture and a seminar at the end of the semester. There will be no written exam, but a (group-)presentation and a thesis instead. The tutorial will take place two or three times and is not mandatory.
Contents:
A challenging task is making appropriate collective decisions on behalf of a group or society. In aggregating citizens' opposing views, one faces various issues, most of which derive from Arrow's impossibility theorem. The social choice theory addresses the problems of collective decision-making that emerge in different ways: elections, decisions by liberal values, decisions based on theories of justice, and so on. Social Choice is an interdisciplinary approach covering a variety of disciplines, from economics, political science, philosophy, mathematics, and legal science.
The starting point of this course will be the simple question: why is an (economic) situation, say x, judged to be better than another? If the public assessment is based on an electoral process, then the electoral outcome probably depends more on the chosen voting method than on voters' support for the running parties.
Outline:
1. Introduction: Social-choice theory as an approach (Sen, 2009, p. 91ff)
2. Preference Relations and Social Preference (Sen, 2017; ch. 1*, ch. a1*)
3. The Arrow impossibility theorem (Sen, 2017, ch. 3, 3*)
4. Voting Theory and the Beyond-Arrow approach (Saari 2000, Sen 2017, ch. 5, 5*)
5. Strategy proofness (Dasgupta and Maskin 2020)
6. Domination theory (Dasgupta and Maskin, 2008, 2020)
7. Preference intensities, MIIA, political polarization (Maskin 2020)
8. The Liberal Paradox and the theory of rights, (Sen (1970), Sen, 2017; ch. 6*, ch. a5 - a6)
9. Theory of Justice (Sen, 2009, ch. 1 - 3, part 4)
10. Economics and Democracy [(sen, 2009, part iv), habermas (2019)]
Recommended reading list:
Sen, A.: Collective Choice and Social Welfare (2017)
Sen, A.: The Idea of Justice (2009)
Sen, A.: How to judge voting schemes. Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (1995), p. 91–98.
Sen, A.: Rationality and social choice. American Economic Review 85 (1995), p. 1–24.
Sen A.: (1970) The impossibility of a Paretian liberal. J Political Economy 72 (1970), p. 152-157
Maskin, Sen: The Arrow Impossibility Theorem (2014)
May, K.O. 1952. A set of independent necessary and sufficient conditions for simple majority decision.
Econometrica 20:680–684.
Habermas, J.: Faktizität und Geltung (2019).
Skaperdas, S.: Cooperation, Conflict, and Power in the Absence of Property Rights. American Economic Review 82 (1992), p. 720-239
Williamson, O.: The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead. JeconPersp 38 (2000), p. 595-613
Digital teaching:
The course will be held on BBB platform in case that the pandemic does not allow lectures on campus.
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