THE POSSIBILITY OF A SOCIAL WELFARE FUNCTION

Ever since 1951, when Kenneth Arrow published his monograph showing the paradox that social welfare functions generate, there has been interest in overcoming or bypassing this paradox.' The paradox is that, given certain simple and very persuasive conditions for collective rationality, there can be no decision rule which meets these conditions. The conditions, simply stated, are these: 1. Between three alternatives, the social welfare function...