This Subject Includes

• Course No: HS 251
• Course:
• Semester: VIII
• Title: Social Choice and Welfare
• Stream: Economics

• Preamble / Objectives (Optional):  This course is an introduction to social choice and welfare. The social choice theory mainly deals with aggregation of individual preferences to get a preference ordering of the society. It is useful in studying election outcome. We will cover voting theory, bargaining, few concepts of cooperative game theory (Shapley Value and Core), fair allocations and matching will be covered in this course. 

   After completion of this course, the students will learn about aggregation of individual preferences, the ways to divide a surplus between two persons and the case of multilateral bargaining. How to adjudicate a firm when it goes bankrupt among its creditors?  They will learn about the different properties of commonly used allocation rules or sharing rules.

  Course Content/ Syllabus

  Preference Aggregation: Individual Preferences, Properties of Social Welfare Function, Majority and Borda Voting Rules,  Arrow’s Impossibility Result;

  Liberal Paradox;

  Bargaining: Nash Bargaining and Kalai-Smorodinsky Bargaining Solution;

  Core (A solution concept of cooperative game theory);

   Shapley Value (A solution concept of cooperative game theory);

  Allocation Rules: Bankruptcy Problem, Constraint Equal Awards Rule, Proportional Rule, Constrained Equal Losses Rule;

   Matching: Students to dorm rooms, Organ donors to recipients, Children to schools.

   

  Books (In case UG compulsory courses, please give it as “Text books” and “Reference books”.  Otherwise give it as “References”.

  Texts: (Format: Authors, Book Title in Italics font, Volume/Series, Edition Number, Publisher, Year.)

  1. Ein-Ya Gura and Michael Maschler,  Insights into Game Theory An Alternative Mathematical Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2010
  2. Wulf Gaertner, A Primer in Social Choice Theory, Oxford University Press, 2013

  References: (Format: Authors, Book Title in Italics font, Volume/Series, Edition Number, Publisher, Year.)

  1. Amartya Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, Penguin Books, 2017
  2. Satya R. Chakraborty, Manipushpak Mitra and Palash Sarkar, A Course on Cooperative Game Theory,Cambridge University Press, 2015