Title
The proximity condition.
Abstract
We investigate the social choice implications of what we call “the proximity condition”. Loosely speaking, this condition says that whenever a profile moves “closer” to some individual’s point of view, then the social choice cannot move “further away” from this individual’s point of view. We apply this idea in two settings: merging functions and preference aggregation. The precise formulation of the proximity condition depends on the setting. First, restricting attention to merging functions that are interval scale invariant, we prove that the only functions that satisfy proximity are dictatorships. Second, we prove that the only social welfare functions that satisfy proximity and a version of the Pareto criterion are dictatorships. We conclude that either proximity is not an attractive normative requirement after all, or we must give up some other social choice condition. Another possibility is that our normative intuition about proximity needs to be codified using different axioms.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1007/s00355-011-0630-6
Social Choice and Welfare
Keywords
Field
DocType
Social Choice, Social Welfare Function, Social Planner, Interval Scale, Preference Ranking
Welfare economics,Aggregation problem,Social choice theory,Mathematical economics,Axiom,Normative,Social planner,Invariant (mathematics),Social welfare function,Pareto principle,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
39
2-3
1432-217X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.41
3
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Conal Duddy1344.54
Ashley Piggins2354.42