Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory

Allan M. Feldman has taught economics at Brown University for 34 years. He has written and published articles in the areas of general equilibrium theory, fairness and equity, Arrow’s theorem, strategy-proofness, majority voting theory, compensation criteria, the value of life, and law and economics. He has taught thousands of Brown undergraduates in a wide variety of courses, and has served for many years as the director of undergraduate studies in economics at Brown. He has also worked as an economics consultant in litigation. Roberto Serrano is a Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has worked since 1992 when he got his PhD from Harvard University. His fields of research are economic theory and game theory. He has been an Associate Editor of several journals, including Economic Theory, Mathematical Social Sciences and Research in Economics. He has published over thirty articles in refereed journals, and his research has been supported through fellowships and awards from prestigious institutions, including The Sloan Foundation, the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation and Spain’s Fundacion Banco Herrero.

Preferences and Utility.- Barter Exchange.- Welfare Properties of Market Exchange.- Welfare Properties of “Jungle” Exchange.- Economies with Production.- Uncertainty in Exchange.- Externalities.- Public Goods.- Compensation Criteria.- Fairness and the Rawls Criterion.- Life and Death Choices.- Majority Voting.- Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.- Dominant-Strategy Implementation.- Nash Implementation.- Bayesian Implementation.- Epilogue.