Nature, Choice and Social Power

Power, prosperity and social choice: A review

Mancur Olson’s book, The Rise and Decline of Nations [45], used ideas from his earlier Logic of Collective Action [44] to argue that entrenched interest groups in a polity could induce economic sclerosis, or slow growth. These ideas seemed relevant to the perceived relative decline of the U.S. and Britain during the 1970’s. Five years later, Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ...

Social Approval and Occupational Choice Social Approval and Occupational Choice

We examine the impact of a desire for social approval on education and occupation choice and model the endogenous determination of perceptions that influence such approval. In a two-sector overlapping generations framework, agents born with ability endowments in both occupations must choose one as their career. An agent’s choice is influenced by social approval, which depends upon the community...

Social Choice and Social Networks

Topological Social Choice Topological Social Choice

The topological approach to social choice was developed by Graciela Chichilnisky in the beginning of the eighties. The main result in this area (known as the resolution of the topological social choice paradox) shows that a space of preferences admits of a continuous, anonymous, and unanimous aggregation rule for every number of individuals if and only if the space is contractible. Furthermore,...

Social Choice and Welfare

ed/Indexed in: ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide, CSA Political Science & Government, CSA Sociological Abstracts, Current