Equity, Efficiency, and Social Choice

Professor K.J. Arrow's impossibility theorem uncovered elementary conditions under which dictatorial welfare functions are the only ones consistent with efficiency. This book proves that if the efficiency condition is relaxed in any way, then either social welfare function is independent of individual preferences, or else it is sensitive to the preferences of only one, fixed, individual. In this and other ways, the absence of meaningful efficiency-equity tradeoffs is demonstrated--the transitivity requirement is relaxed, for example. Campbell investigates efficiency and equity in a framework of welfare economics; the outcomes are allocations of public and private good in finite and overlapping generations economies.Campbell, Donald E. is the author of 'Equity, Efficiency, and Social Choice' with ISBN 9780198287087 and ISBN 0198287089.