Social Choice Theory and the World in Which We Live: Review Article
Social Choice Theory and the World in Which We Live: Review Article
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社会选择理论与我们生活的世界：评论文章
DOI：
10.1093/oxfordjournals.cje.a035544
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发表时间：
1984
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
L. Taylor
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
L. Taylor
社会选择理论是一种间接的政治论证。它的根源可以追溯到启蒙运动-约翰·洛克和让-雅克·卢梭关于制定社会契约的困难，以及查尔斯·德·博尔达和孔多塞侯爵关于投票规则的矛盾。这一理论在一代人之前就以肯尼斯·阿罗（Kenneth Arrow）的《社会选择与个人价值》（1951）一书中的“一般可能性定理”（general possibility theorem）而获得了现代形式。典型的，该定理说的是不可能发生的事情，即不可能将独立个体的偏好整合到一个满足四个看似薄弱的合理性条件的社会秩序中。尽管这一发现催生了一门完整的学科，但从这一发现中得出的实际结论仍然模糊不清。社会选择经济学家是否像他们的许多数学兄弟一样，仅仅寻求他们公式的安慰，或者他们试图启迪世界？这个问题并不是微不足道的，因为在更高的层面上，宗教和伦理创新者（想想佛陀）的间接性证明了这一点。我们回到下面。阿马蒂亚·森在经济学和其他学科的许多领域都有出色的著作，作为这项活动的一部分，他声称自己是（继阿罗之后）世界领先的社会选择理论家。他在这一领域的论文集（以下简称CWM）在几个方面推进了间接主义方案，然后试图将其应用于贫困和收入分配的衡量。这本书似乎是一个理想的试验场的工作一代有能力的头脑。森的积极含义是，要克服阿罗的障碍，社会秩序，我们必须建立脚手架的信息超越一致的偏好和他们的聚集在一个“福利主义”的社会决策功能只取决于个人的效用水平。然而，这座桥梁本身可能会建立在流沙上。这本书以一部分攻击经济学家的显示偏好理论本身的论文开始。回忆一下教科书中的显示偏好是如何工作的。在一组给定的价格下，消费者会选择一组商品x而不是另一组商品y。因此，x比y更“显示出偏好”。如果一个人在他或她的订单上是一致的，那么消费者选择的标准定理就很容易遵循。在真实的收入保持不变的情况下，当商品价格上涨时，她或他会减少购买。到目前为止，一切都很好（尽管有人可能会问古斯塔夫·卡塞尔，首先证明一个关于不可避免的不可观察偏好的定理有什么用）。但注意各种
Social choice theory is political argument by indirection. Its roots can be traced in the Enlightenment—John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the difficulties in formulating a social contract, and Charles de Borda and the Marquis de Condorcet on contradictions in voting rules. The theory took its modern form over a generation ago with the'general possibility theorem'in Kenneth Arrow's book on Social Choice and the Individual Values (1951). Characteristically, the theorem says something cannot happen—that it is not possible to put together the preferences of independent individuals into a social order satisfying four weak-looking conditions of reasonableness. The practical conclusions one draws from this finding remain obscure, despite the fact that it spawned a whole academic discipline. Do social choice economists like many of their mathematical brethren seek only the solace of their formulations or are they trying to enlighten the world? The question is not trivial, as on a higher plane the indirections of religious and ethical innovators (think of the Buddha) demonstrate. We return to it below. Amartya Sen has written brilliantly in many areas of economics and subjects beyond, and as part of this activity he has staked out a claim to being (after Arrow) the world's leading social choice theorist. His collected papers in the area, hereafter called CWM, carry the indirectionist programme forward on several fronts, and then try to apply it to the measurement of poverty and income distribution. The book seems an ideal testing ground for the work of a generation of able minds.Sen's positive implication is that to get over Arrow's barrier to social ordering, we must build scaffolding from information beyond consistent preferences and their aggregation in a'welfaristic'social decision function depending only on individual utility levels. However, this bridgework itself may rest on shifting sands. The book begins with a section of papers attacking the economists' revealed preference theory per se. Recall how revealed preference in the textbooks works. At a given set of prices, a collection of goods x is chosen by a consumer over another collection y. Hence, x is' revealed preferred'to y. If the person is consistent in his or her orderings, the standard theorem on consumer choice follows easily. With real income held constant, she or he will purchase less of a commodity when its price alone goes up. So far, so good (though one might ask with Gustav Cassel what is the use of proving a theorem about inevitably unobservable preferences in the first place). But note various