Arrow's Impossibility Theorem - Informal Proof

Informal Proof

Based on the proof by John Geanakoplos of Cowles Foundation, Yale University published by Economic Theory (journal) in 2005. (An attempt to improve upon it appeared on the same journal in 2012.)

We wish to prove that any social choice system respecting unrestricted domain, unanimity, and independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) is a dictatorship.

Read more about this topic:  Arrow's Impossibility Theorem

Famous quotes containing the words informal and/or proof:

    We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,—it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)