ECON Department Seminar - Eric Maskin

Department of Economics is organizing the seminar visit of Eric Maskin on Monday April 24 at 4:00 PM in Råvarebygningen, Porcelænshaven 22, PHRs.20.
 
If you plan on attending the seminar, please register.

Speaker: Eric Maskin, Harvard University

Title: A Resolution of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem

Abstract: We argue that Arrow’s (1951) independence of irrelevant alternatives condition (IIA) is unjustifiably stringent. Although, in elections, it has the desirable effect of ruling out spoilers (Candidate A spoils the election for B if B beats C when all voters rank A low, but C beats B when some voters rank A high –A splits off support from B), it is stronger than necessary for this purpose. Worse, it makes a voting rule insensitive to voters’ preference intensities. Accordingly, we propose a modified version of IIA to address these problems. Rather than obtaining an impossibility result, we show that a voting rule satisfies modified IIA, Arrow’s other conditions, May’s (1952) axioms for majority rule, and a mild consistency condition if and only if it is the Borda count (Borda 1781), i.e., rank-order voting.

Bio: Eric Maskin is the Adams University Professor and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at Harvard. He has made contributions to game theory, contract theory, social choice theory, political economy, and other areas of economics. He received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge University. He was a faculty member at MIT from 1977-1984, Harvard from 1985- 2000, and the Institute for Advanced Study from 2000-2011. He rejoined the Harvard faculty in 2012. In 2007, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (with L. Hurwicz and R. Myerson) for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory.

Information about the Event

Date and time Monday 24. April 2023 at 16:00 to 17:00

Registration Deadline Monday 24. April 2023 at 15:00

Location Råvarebygningen, PHRs20
Porcelænshaven 22
Frederiksberg
DK-2000

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