Dictatorial domains in preference aggregation (original) (raw)

Abstract

We call a domain of preference orderings “dictatorial” if there exists no Arrovian (Pareto optimal, IIA and non-dictatorial) social welfare function defined over that domain. In a finite world of alternatives where indifferences are ruled out, we identify a condition which implies the dictatoriality of a domain. This condition, to which we refer as “being essentially saturated”, is fairly weak. In fact, independent of the number of alternatives, there exists an essentially saturated (hence dictatorial) domain which consists of precisely six orderings. Moreover, this domain exhibits the superdictatoriality property, i.e., every superdomain of it is also dictatorial. Thus, given m alternatives, the ratio of the size of a superdictatorial domain to the size of the full domain may be as small as 6/m!, converging to zero as m increases.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Economics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
   Ugur Ozdemir
2. Department of Economics, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey
   M. Remzi Sanver

Authors

1. Ugur Ozdemir
2. M. Remzi Sanver

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Correspondence toUgur Ozdemir.

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Ozdemir, U., Sanver, M.R. Dictatorial domains in preference aggregation.Soc Choice Welfare 28, 61–76 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0154-7

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• Received: 29 March 2005
• Accepted: 19 January 2006
• Published: 12 August 2006
• Issue date: January 2007
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0154-7

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