Essays on Individual Decision Making and Social Welfare

by Pattanaik, Prasanta K.

• ISBN13: 9780195695960
• ISBN10: 0195695968
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-08-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

These essays by eminent economist Prasanta K. Pattanaik deal with two distinct areas: (i) the theory of decision making by individuals; and (ii) welfare economics and the theory of social choice. The papers in the first group are all concerned with situations outside the conventional frameworks of rational choice under perfect certainty and uncertainty. Essays in the second group are concerned with the classical problem of aggregation of preferences and welfare judgments. Some deal with the formal modeling of individual rights, and the measurement of freedom--concluding with measurement of living standards. The volume will be useful to researchers and students of welfare economics. Besides economists, students and teachers of psychology, political science, and philosophy will also find them of interest.

Author Biography

Prasanta K. Pattanaik is Professor Emeritus, University of California

Table of Contents

Part 1. Individual Preferences and Choice1. On Choosing Rationality when Preferences are Fuzzy2. Soft Sets: An Ordinal Formulation with some Application to the Theory of Choice3. Falmagne and the Rationalization of Stochastic Choices in Terms of Random Orderings4. Stochastic Revealed Preferences and the Theory of Demand; Chapter5. A General Revealed Preference Theory of Stochastic Demand6. Decision making Under complete Uncertainty; Chapter7. An Axiomatic Characterization of the Lexicographic maximin extension of an ordering over a set to the Power Set8. Median based extension of an ordering over a set to the Power Set: An Axiomatic CharacterizationPart 2. Welfare Economics9. Little and Bergson on Arrow's Concept to Social Welfare10. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for rational Choice under Majority Decision11. Distribution of Power Under Stochastic Social Choice Rules12. Risk Impersonality and the Social Welfare Function13. Individual Rights Revisited14. Game forms, Rights, and the Efficiency of Social Outcomes15. Individual Rights and Social Evaluation16. On ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice17. On Preferences and Freedom18. Minimal Relativism, Dominance and Standard of Living Comparisons Based on Functioning19. On Measuring Deprivation and the Standard of Living in a Multidimensional framework on the basis of aggregate data.