Irrelevant Alternatives
This chapter examines the notion of ‘irrelevant alternatives’ in the context of social choice problems. It is shown that seemingly irrelevant alternatives could be relevant because of their information content. This leads to a consideration of aggregation rules where an endogenous condition of independence of irrelevant alternatives is imposed. The analysis leads to the characterization of a unique procedure to aggregate preferences — Borda's rule. This new characterization provides insight into independence conditions and into the status of Borda's rule. An extension to a domain incorporating interpersonal comparisons is also pursued.
Keywords: social choice, independence, information aggregation, Borda's Rule
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