Abstention as an escape from Arrow's theorem

摘要

There are non-dictatorial social welfare functions satisfying the Pareto principle and Arrow's independence of irrelevant alternatives when voters can abstain. In particular, with just seven voters, the number of dictatorial social welfare functions satisfying Arrow's conditions could be deemed, relative to the total number of social welfare functions satisfying Arrow's conditions, negligible. Keywords Abstention - Arrow's theorem - Number of voters - Proportion of dictatorial social welfare functions JEL D71