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Abstention as an escape from Arrow's theorem

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

My most sincere gratitude to the anonymous referee who reviewed this note (and brought Bordes and Le Breton (1990) and Kelly (1994) to my attention) and to Maurice Salles.

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  1. Departament d'Economia, Facultat de Ciències Econòmiques i Empresarials, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Avinguda de la Universitat 1, 43204, Reus, Spain

    Antonio Quesada

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  1. Antonio Quesada
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Correspondence to Antonio Quesada.

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Quesada, A. Abstention as an escape from Arrow's theorem. Soc Choice Welfare 25, 221–226 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-005-0054-2

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